“Because you would not expose the possibility.” Rostov pulled the gun back, but did not lower it.
“Really? It strikes me as a pretty good blanket. I mean, you’d never know, would you? On the other hand, we’ve developed a serum—which I know nothing about except that it’s injected at the base of the skull—that voids the programming. Something to do with neutralizing the lobus occipitalis, whatever the hell that is. From here on we can make a determination.”
“Such an admission astonishes me.”
“Why should it? Maybe I’m fust saving our respective directors a lot of aggravation; that could be my objective. Or maybe none of it’s true; maybe there is no serum, no protection, and I’m making it all up. That’s also a possibility.”
The Russian smiled. “Khvatit! You are out! You amuse us both with logic that could serve you. You’re on your way to that farm in your own Grasnov.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Am I worth the risk?”
“Let’s find out.” Suddenly the Russian flipped his automatic, barrel up; he slapped it back in the palm of his hand and threw it to Havelock on the bed. Michael caught the weapon in midair.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“What do you want to do with it?”
“Nothing. Assuming the first three shells are rubber capsules filled with dye, I’d only soil your clothes.” Havelock pressed the magazine release; the clip dropped to the bed. “It’s not a very good test, anyway. Say the firing pin works and this thing makes any noise at all, twenty khruschei could break in here and blow me out of the park.”
“The firing pin works and there’s no one outside in the hallway. The Arethusa Delphi is very much in Washington’s camp; it’s watched and I’m not so foolish as to parade our personnel. I think you know that. It’s why you’re here.”
“What are you trying to prove?”
The Russian smiled again and shrugged. “I’m not really sure. A brief something in the eyes, perhaps. When a man’s under a hostile gun and that gun is suddenly his, there is an instant compulsion to eliminate the prior threat—assuming the hostility is returned. It’s in the eyes; no amount of control can disguise it—if the enmity is active.”
“What was in my eyes?”
“Absolute indifference. Weariness, if you will.”
“I’m not sure you’re right, but I admire your courage. It’s more than I’ve got. The firing pin really works?”
“Yes.”
“No capsules?”
The Russian shook his head, his expression conveying quiet amusement. “No bullets. That is to say, no powder in the shells.” Rostov raised his left hand and, with his right, pulled back the sleeve of his overcoat. Strapped to the flat of his wrist, extending up toward his elbow, was a thin barrel, the trigger mechanism apparently activated by the bending of his arm. “Snotvornoye,” he said, touching the taut, springlike wires. “What you call narcotic darts. You would have slept peacefully for the better part of tomorrow while a doctor insisted that your odd fever be stutdied at the hospital. We’d have gotten you out, flown you up to Salonika and over the Dardanelles into Sevastopol.” The Russian unsnapped a strap above his wrist and removed the weapon.
Havelock studied the KGB man, not a little perplexed. “You really could have taken me.”
“Until the attempt is made, one never knows. I might have missed the first shot, and you’re younger, stronger than I; you could have attacked, broken my neck. But the odds were on my side.”
“I’d say completely. Why didn’t you play them?”
“Because you’re right. We don’t want you. The risks are too great—not those you spoke of, but others. I simply had to know the truth and I’m now convinced. You are no longer in the service of your government.”
“What risks?”
“They’re unknown to us, but they are there. Anything you can’t understand in this business is a risk, but I don’t have to tell you that.”
“Tell me something. I just got a pardon; I’d like to know why.”
“Very well.” The Soviet intelligence officer hesitated; he walked aimlessly toward the double doors that led to the miniature balcony and opened one several inches. Then he closed it and turned to Havelock. “I should tell you first that I’m not here on orders from Dzerzhinsky Square, or even with its blessings. To be frank, my aging superiors in the KGB believe I’m in Athens on an unrelated matter. You can either accept that or not.”
“Give me a reason to or not. Someone must know. You jedratele don’t do anything solo.”
“Specifically, two others. A close associate in Moscow and a dedicated man—a mole, to be sure—out of Washington.”
“You mean Langley?”
The Russian shook his head. He replied softly, “The White House.”
“I’m impressed. So two ranking kontrolyorya of the KGB and a Soviet mole within walking distance of the Oval Office decide they want to talk to me, but they don’t want to take me. They can fly me into Sevastopol and from there to a room at the Lubyanka, where any talking we did would be far more productive—from their point of view—but they won’t do that. Instead, the spokesman for these three—a man I know only from photographs and by reputation—tells me there are risks associated with me that he can’t define but knows that they exist, and because of them I’m given the option of talking or not—about what I haven’t the vaguest idea. Is that a fair reading?”
“You have the Slavic propensity for going right to the core of a subject.”
“I don’t see any ancestral connection. It’s common sense. You spoke, I listened; that’s what you said—or what you’re about to say. Basic logic.”
Rostov stepped away from the balcony doors, his expression pensive. “I’m afraid that’s the one factor that’s missing. The logic.”
“Now we’re talking about something else.”
“Yes, we are.”
“what?”
“You. The Costa Brava.”
Havelock paused. The anger was in his eyes, but it was controlled. “Go on.”
“The woman. She’s why you retired, isn’t she?”
“This conversation is terminated,” said Havelock abruptly. “Get out of here.”
“Please,” The Russian raised both hands, a gesture of truce, perhaps a plea. “I think you should listen to me.”
“I don’t think so. There’s nothing you could say that would remotely interest me. The Voennaya is to be congratulated; it was a hell of a job. They won, she won. And then she lost. It’s finished, and there’s nothing further to say about it.”
“There is.”
“Not to me.”
“The VKR are maniacs,” said the Russian quietly, urgently. “I don’t have to tell you that You and I are enemies, and neither would pretend otherwise, but we acknowledge certain rules between us. We’re not salivating dogs, we’re professionals. There’s a fundamental respect each has for the other, perhaps grounded in fear, although not necessarily. Grant me that, priyatel.”
Their eyes were level, penetrating. Havelock nodded. “I know you from the files, just as you know me. You weren’t part of it.”
“Wasted death is still death, still a waste. Unnecessary and provocative death a very dangerous waste. It can be hurled back tenfold in fury at the instigator.”
“Tell that to the Voennaya. There was no waste as far as they were concerned. Only necessity.”
“Butchers!” snapped Rostov, his voice guttural. “Who can tell them anything? They’re descendants of the old OGPU slaughterhouses, inheritors of the mad assassin Yagoda. They’re also up to their throats in paranoid fantasies going back half a century when Yagoda gunned down the quieter, more reasonable men, hating their lack of fanaticism, equating that lack with treason against the revolution. Do you know the VKR?”
“Enough so as to stand far back and hope to hell you can control it.”
“I wish I could answer confidently in the affirmative. It’s as
if a band of your screaming right-wing zealots had been given official status as a subdivision of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“We have checks and balances—sometimes. If such a subdivision came to be—and it could—it would be continuously scrutinized, openly criticized. Funds would be watched closely, methods studied; ultimately the group would be thrown out.”
“You’ve had your lapses, your various un-American activities committees, your McCarthys, the Huston plans, purges in the irresponsible press. Careers have been destroyed, lives degraded Yes, you’ve had your share of lapses.”
“Always short-lived. We have no gulags, no ‘rehabilitation’ programs in a Lubyanka. And that irresponsible press has a way of becoming responsible now and then. It threw out a regime of arrogant hot shots. The Kremlin’s wilder ones stay in place.”
“We both have our lapses, then. But we’re so much younger; youth is allowed mistakes.”
“And there’s nothing,” interrupted Michael, “to compare with the VKR’s paminyatchik operation. That wouldn’t be tolerated or funded by the worst Congress or administration in history.”
“Another paranoid fantasy!” cried the KGB officer, adding derisively, “The paminyatchiki! Even the word is a corruption, meaningless! A discredited strategy mounted decades ago! You can’t honestly believe it still flourishes.”
“Perhaps less than the Voennaya does. Obviously more than you do—if you’re not lying.”
“Oh, come, Havelock! Russian infants sent to the United States, growing up with old-line, no doubt pathetically senile, Marxists so as to become entrenched Soviet agents? Insanity! Be reasonable. It’s psychologically unsound—if not disastrous—to say nothing of certain inevitable comparisons. We’d lost the majority to blue jeans, rock music and fast automobiles. We’d be idiots.”
“Now you’re lying. They exist. You know it and we know it.”
Rostov shrugged. “A question of numbers, then. And value, I might add. How many can be left? Fifty, a hundred, two hundred at the outside? Sad, amateurishly conspiratorial creatures wandering around a few cities, meeting in cellars to exchange nonsense, uncertain of their own values, the very reasons for being where they are. Very little credence is given these so-called travelers, take my word for it.”
“But you haven’t pulled them out.”
“Where would we put them? Few even speak the Russian language; they’re a large embarrassment. Attrition, priyatel, that’s the answer. And dismissing them with lip service, as you Americans say.”
“The Voennaya doesn’t dismiss them.”
“I told you, the men of the VKR pursue misguided fantasies.”
“I wonder if you believe that,” said Michael, studying the Russian. “Not all those families were pathetic and senile, not all the travelers amateurs.”
“If there is currently—or in the recent past—any movement of consequence on the part of the paminyatchiki, we are not aware of it,” said Rostov firmly.
“And if there is and you’re not aware of it, that would be something of consequence, wouldn’t it?”
The Russian stood motionless; he spoke, his voice low and pensive. “The VKR is incredibly secretive. It would be something of consequence.”
“Then maybe I’ve given you something to think about. Call it a parting gift from a retired enemy.”
“I look for no such gifts,” said Rostov coldly. “They’re as gratuitous as your presence here in Athens.”
“Since you don’t approve, go back to Moscow and fight your own fights. Your infrastructure doesn’t concern me any longer. And unless you’ve got another comic-book weapon up your other sleeve. I suggest you leave.”
“That’s just it, pyehshkah. Yes, pyehshkah. Pawn. It is as you say—an infrastructure. Separate sections, indeed, but one entity. There is first the KGB; all else follows. A man—or a woman—may gravitate to the Voennaya, may even excel in its deepest operations, but first he or she must have sprung from the KGB. At the very minimum there has to be a Dzerzhinsky dossier somewhere. With foreign recruits it’s, as you would say, a double imperative. Internal protection, of course.”
Havelock sat forward on the bed, confusion joining the anger in his eyes. “Say what you’re trying to say and say it quickly. There’s a smell about you, priyatel!”
“I suspect there is about all of us, Mikhail Havlíček. Our nostrils never quite adjust, do they? Perversely, they become sensitive—to variations of that basic odor. Like animals.”
“Say it.”
“There is no listing for a Jenna Karasova or the Anglicized Karas in any branch or division of the KGB.”
Havelock stared at the Russian, then suddenly he spun off the bed, gripping the sheet and whipping it into the air, obscuring the Russian’s vision. He lunged forward, hammering Rostov against the wall beyond the balcony doors. He twisted the KGB man clockwise by the wrist and smashed his head into the frame of a cheap oil painting as he whipped his right arm around Rostov’s neck in a hammerlock. “I could kill you for that,” he whispered, breathless, the muscles of his jaw pulsating against Rostov’s bald head. “You said I might break your neck. I could do it right now!”
“You could,” said the Russian, choking. “And you’d be cut down. Either in this room or on the street outside.”
“I thought you didn’t have anyone in the hotel!”
“I lied. There are three men, two dressed as waiters down the hallway by the elevators, one inside the staircase. There’s no final protection for you here in Athens. My people are out there—on the street as well—every doorway covered. My instructions are clear: I’m to emerge from a specific exit at a specific time. Any deviations from either will result in your death. The room will be stormed; the cordon around the Arethusa is unbreakable. I’m not an idiot.”
“Maybe not, but as you said, you’re an animal!” He released the Russian and hurled him across the room. “Go back to Moscow and tell them the bait’s too obvious, the stench too rotten! I’m not taking it, priyatel. Get out of here!”
“No bait,” protested Rostov, regaining his balance and holding his throat. “Your own argument: what could you really tell us that would be worth the risks, or the reprisals, perhaps? Or the uncertainties? You’re finished. Without programming, you could lead us into a hundred traps—a theory that has crossed our minds, incidentally. You talk freely and we act on what you say, but what you tell us is no longer operative. Through you we go after strategies—not simple codes and ciphers, but supposedly long-term vital strategies—that Washington has aborted without telling you. In the process we reveal our personnel. Surely you’re aware of this. You talk of logic? Heed your own words.”
Havelock stared at the Soviet officer, his breathing audible, anger and bewilderment compounding the emotional strain. Even the shadow of a possibility that an error had been made at Costa Brava was more than he could face. But there was no error. A Baader-Meinhof defector had set off the revealing chain of events. The evidence had been sent to Madrid, and he had pored over it, sifting every fragment for a shred to the contrary. There was nothing; there was everything. Even Anthony Matthias—Anton Matthias, friend, mentor, surrogate father—had demanded indepth verification; it had been returned: Positive.
“No! The proof was there! She was there! I saw for myself! I said I had to see for myself and they agreed!”
“‘They’? who is ‘they’?”
“You know as well as I do! Men like you! The inside shell—strategists! You didn’t look hard enough. You’re wrong!”
The Russian moved his head slowly in circles, his left hand massaging his throat; he spoke softly. “I won’t deny that the possibility exists—as I said, the VKR is maniacally secretive, especially in Moscow—but that possibility is remote.… We were astonished. An unusually productive decoy conduit is led into a terrorist trap by her own people, who then proceed to hold the KGB responsible for her death by claiming she was one of us. The result of this manipulation is the neutering of the wom
an’s constant companion, her lover, a deep-cover, multilingual field agent of exceptional talent. Disillusion and disgust overwhelm him; he takes himself out. We are amazed; we search the dossier vaults, including the most inaccessible. She is nowhere. Jenna Karas—Karasova—was never a part of us.” Rostov paused, his eyes conveying his awareness: Michael Havelock was a dangerously provoked panther about to spring, about to strike. The Russian continued, his voice flat: “We are grateful; we profit by your elimination, but we ask ourselves Why? Why was this done? Is it a trick? If so, for what purpose? Who gains? On the surface we do, but again, why? How?”
“Ask the VKR!” shouted Michael contemptuously. “They didn’t plan it this way, but that’s the way it happened. I’m the bonus! Ask them!”
“We did,” said the Russian. “A section director, saner than most, who, because of his relative sanity, is frightened of his peers. He told us that he personally was not familiar with the Karas woman or the specifics at Costa Brava, but since the field personnel raised no questions, he assumed no questions should be raised. As he pointed out, the results were favorable: two condors shot down, both talented, one exceptional. The Voennaya was pleased to take credit.”
“Why shouldn’t they? I was out, and she could be Justified. A sacrifice by any name is still the same. It’s expendable for a purpose. He said it; he acknowledged it.”
“He did not acknowledge it and he was saying something quite different. I told you, he’s a frightened man. Only my rank persuaded him to go as far as he did.”
“You’re reaching.”
“I listened. As you listened to me a few moments ago. He was telling us that he hadn’t the vaguest idea what had happened or why.”
“He personally didn’t know,” said Havelock angrily. “The people in the field knew. She knew!”