The plane was a regular Aeroflot jetliner but Rykov had commandeered it and they were the only passengers. Snow made streaks along the windows when it took off into the freezing gale and the air turbulence was extreme.
“Of course I want a direct line opened,” Rykov said, “that’s your first job. You’ll find plenty of technical help on the scene; that’s one advantage of having a team this big. It all has to be set up very quickly because we don’t know how soon we’ll need activation. You’ll be talking to most of them—certainly all the cell leaders—separately. Short of an emergency at this end you’ll have to maintain security.”
Belsky studied the list Rykov had taken out of the attaché case, reviewing the litany of photographic ID portraits and introduction procedures and the instructions Rykov had given him on the way to the airport.
Even at eleven thousand meters the plane encountered high jetstream turbulence and Rykov was vaguely aware of it when the pilot banked to starboard and angled south to detour around the weather. After a while, with Belsky still buried in the documents, Rykov dozed off.
He awoke drowsily with daylight and recognized through thin cirrus below the outlines of the Aral Sea. The launch complex of the Baikonur Cosmodrome—it meant the old Amergrad kolkhoz was an hour or two behind them. Rykov thought of the place without emotion.
Belsky said, “Clarification, please. In the event of activation they will have to move fast and there’s a good chance of discovery. If cover is blown, do we continue operations or go to ground?”
“If you’re ordered into activation you’ll have to continue the operation right through to completion no matter what happens.”
“In other words you’re prepared to sacrifice the deep-cover network.”
“It’s not exactly a matter of sacrificing them. We didn’t seed them there to remain in deep cover until they die of old age. They’re to be used, they understand that.”
“I hope they do. They’ve had twenty years to change their minds.”
“That option has never been open to them,” Rykov said. “You may have to stiffen a few spines, of course.”
“And if I have to set an example or two?”
Rykov answered, “Do it.”
They crossed high over the Irtysh River with Mongolia somewhere beyond the clouds to starboard and at noon the liner set down at Tomsk to refuel. When they took off again the weather was clearing and the flight followed the snowy ribbon of the Siberian Railway east across Irkutsk and the frozen surface of Lake Baikal, across the white tangle of the Yablonoi Mountains toward the drifted wastes of far-east Siberia.
Rykov said, “You’ll have to keep the direct line open at all times once you’ve been ordered to activate. It’s always possible a countermand will come down, even up to the last minute.”
“Of course. You sound as if you seriously expect activation.”
“It depends on the Chinese, doesn’t it.”
Belsky said, “We’ve never had a network this big that’s been in place nearly this long. Most of them have children—adolescent and fully grown. It’s going to be sticky.”
“That’s your job, Leon. You know I rely on you.”
The expressionless brown eyes moved vaguely toward him and away again. “Those children are American children, not Russian. They are of no objective importance to us one way or the other, of course, but they are of considerable importance in that their existence has to have a bearing on any decisions made by the parents.”
“The Illegals are there to execute instructions and they know it perfectly well—they know what happens otherwise: to them, to their children, to the relations they left behind in the Soviet Union.” Rykov moved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “I know it isn’t simple, cut-and-dried, but you’ll handle it. I chose you for this because you’re the one man who can be relied on to carry out this assignment without being programmed step by step. Are you worried?”
“Of course I am.” There was no visible sign of it.
“If you weren’t, I’d think less of you.”
It was dark when the jet made its descent at Khabarovsk, seven hundred kilometers due north of the port of Vladivostok. Rykov stood up and shouldered into his ankle-length greatcoat and tugged the earflaps of his hat down snug. “Good-bye, then.”
Belsky kept his seat, only nodding his acknowledgment, and Rykov went out and down the ramp. The tarmac was bitter cold, windswept; the ice surface splintered under his boot soles like eggshells. He followed the lights of the terminal building, a corrugated-metal quonset-type structure. Behind him the big jet turned ponderously on its undercarriage and taxied out to the runway to take off again; it would deposit Belsky at Vladivostok and return in less than two hours to collect Rykov and take him back to Moscow.
He limped forward against the wind, bracing a crooked arm before his face. Siberia. How many thousands had been exiled to these wastes by his signature? The thought distressed him because he was not, after all, inhuman; but the requirements of the people as a whole always took precedence over the requirements of individuals, and Rykov—jailer, extortionist, executioner—was above all the instrument of the State.
But not unwitting. He had devoted his life to protecting the Russian people from their enemies. He seldom agreed with the Presidium line. He frequently used his power to block foolishness from above. He was instrument, but not puppet—never puppet. The survival of a nation was at stake and Rykov had no time to waste on slavish obeisance to those whom circumstances placed in positions superior to his own: his loyalty was to the Soviet Union, not to its rulers of the moment.
… The warmth inside the terminal was sudden and welcome. He checked in at OVIR and went through the turnstile looking for his contact. A small man, myopic and large-headed, came away from the coffee counter and smiled nervously. “Comrade Ivankovitch? Come with me, please?” The small man turned and led him toward a door with a KEEP OUT sign. “My name is Berdachev.”
Rykov grunted.
The door gave way to a corridor—lino floor, yellow-brown government paint, office doors along both walls. The hallway was not heated and the air temperature was well below freezing. Berdachev led him down half the length of the corridor, around a corner into a side hall and into a small office occupied by filing cabinets, a long table, two unshaded lights suspended from the low corrugated ceiling, and two Oriental women. One was stunning; the other was enormously fat.
The fat woman growled, “Shut the door, Berdi, before we all freeze. Hello, Ivan.”
Rykov removed his coat and threw it on a chair. “You don’t look well, Valentia.”
“It’s the winter, I suppose one needs more sun.”
“I want you to lose weight.”
“Fat protects the blood from the cold.”
“You’re too conspicuous,” he said, and glanced at the lithe young woman in yellow silk. Then he turned to face Berdachev at the door and said, “This will be private if you please.”
The fat woman said, “I have complete trust in him.”
“That’s fine. You may have tested his trust. I have not. Do you mind?”
The huge formless shoulders moved. “Go, then, Berdi.”
Berdachev blinked owlishly, nodded, and backed out of the room. Rykov watched until he disappeared around the corridor bend, then he closed the door and returned to the chair. The fat woman laughed. All of her.
In the gray building in the Arbat were cabinets filled with dossiers on every agent, and Valentia’s was a thick file because her sexual proclivities had on occasion created risks. She was a voyeur and that was why the myopic young Berdachev had been with them—to couple with the stunning Anya for Valentia’s amusement. But Valentia was an agent without peer and Anya was her eyes and ears.