Someone spoke into a microphone: “All please rise for the Foreign Office and the M.V.D!”
Shoulder to shoulder, two men came into the room, indifferent to the homage which was their due. Gray-haired, vitriolic Vishinsky, Commissar of the Foreign Office, number three man in the Soviet hierarchy—and dark, swarthy Laurenti Beria, walking with his swaggering stride. Beria—who could tell what place in the hierarchy that mysterious figure filled? Some even hinted at number one, above old Yussov Djugashvilli-Stalin himself….
Beria, head of the Secret Police—certainly the most feared man in all of Russia. But that didn’t matter, and Sonya found other thoughts crossing her mind in rapid succession. Vishinsky and Beria together, an oddity. Did it mean, then, that the secret thing which had cast aside the production of atomic bombs was coming to flower? Vishinsky and Beria certainly looked cheerful enough….
“Look how everyone loves them,” Rashevsky was saying, as he sat down again! “Isn’t it wonderful, my dear?”
“Yes, and I suppose you’re right about Commissar Beria—a truly mighty figure.”
“Hah—now it is you talking about my chief as if he were… ah… a deity. If you don’t stop staring at their table, I think I will suggest we leave this place.”
“Suggest it.”
“My dear—”
She waved at Beria, who waved back while Vishinsky scowled darkly at this lack of dignity. “Go ahead, my Colonel, suggest it. I don’t bite, really, and I’m a little tired anyway.”
“Very well. I’ll take you home. My, notice how early it is….”
“THIS CHAMPAGNE of yours is delicious,” muttered Rashevsky, placing a big hand on Sonya’s lovely white shoulder, where the straps would have been had her evening gown come with straps.
She nestled closer to him, stroked his cheek. “My Colonel…”
“Soft little kitten!”
“Yes, thank you for turning off the lights. It is much more pleasant here in the dark.”
“My priceless jewel!”
“You know, of course, I was only trying to make you jealous at the Club Molotov. I don’t know much of how you work, but I’ll wager that you do an amount equal to Beria’s own.”
“Why, thank you. Yes, yes, to be sure. I do, but few people realize it. Why, only yesterday…”
“What about yesterday, my Colonel?”
“Kitten! Jewel!” That seemed to be the extent of his imagination.
“I said, what about yesterday?”
“Yesterday? Why, we… no, no, it would only trouble your delicate mind.”
“I’m interested.”
“No. I have,said no.”
“Well, is that definite?”
“It is.”
Sonya Fyodoroyna Dolohov sighed, stood up, put on the lights, lit a cigarette. “I suddenly have a headache,” she said, crossing, to the door and opening it. “Will you call me next week?”
Rashevsky bowed, mopping his glistening brow with a silk handkerchief. “Sooner, if you’d like. Thursday?”
“Thursday,” she agreed, letting him kiss her hand, then closing the door behind him.
Maybe on Thursday the pig-ape would talk…
MOSCOW. Less than a week before—Washington. Striding past the Spazzo House—the American Embassy—Nick Skinner found it hard to believe. If anyone had told him, a week before, that he’d be walking the streets of Moscow within a few days, Skinner would have laughed outright.
He felt suddenly like a fly caught, not on the tenuous outer regions of a spider web, but at the core, where all the spider had to do was wrap its great hairy body, around him. And Moscow was a spider’s web in more ways than one. Here was the matrix, the core, the hub. But the web wove its way outward in all directions: China, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Poland… insatiable, it trailed, delicate filaments invitingly….
No one had told him to contact the Embassy, and he considered it an unwise move. First place, he doubted that the Embassy knew of his presence, and he had no proof of his identity beyond his ability, to speak American—something which any good Russian spy should be able to do. Also, any contact with the Embassy might make him that much less efficient as a free-roving agent. And finally, if he were caught, and if he’d been working in conjunction with the portfolio boys, they’d find themselves in plenty of hot water too.
Skinner left the Spazzo House behind him, walked the length of Lenin Avenue. There seemed to be as many green-uniformed city police arid gray-uniformed soldiers as there were citizens on the crowded streets. Twice Skinner was halted, questioned, then released.
The third time, as he approached the gaunt brick wall of the Kremlin, he got a surprise. A soldier, not a policeman, stopped him, and said: “Your papers, Comrade.”
Skinner showed them.
“Transient worker, eh? What are you doing, in Moscow?”
“Vacation.”
“Vacation? Then you’re a Sthakanovite. But Where’s your badge of merit?”
Skinner had pulled a serious boner. Apparently only those workers who produced above and beyond their quotas could expect vacations. “It… has not come yet.”
“Not come yet? Either you have it or you don’t have a vacation. From Tula, eh? Won’t you provincials ever learn you can’t pull the wool over our eyes? Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“Just shut your mouth and come along. You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Da,” said Skinner. “I will go.”
LAURENTI BERIA pushed back his sleek black hair, grunted with satisfaction when he smiled at himself in the mirror and saw the fine rows of even white teeth. He turned to his aide with part of that smile still lingering on his face, the cold part.
“Colonel Rashevsky, what do you know about the Dolohov woman?”
Rashevsky looked up from his desk, spilling some ink on an official document and cursing softly. “Why… not much. But I do know that she’s the loveliest creature in all of Moscow.”
“Very lovely,” Beria admitted. “Also very deadly. Sonya Fyodorovna Dolohov works for the underground.”
“What?”
Beria smiled again. “Are you deaf? I said she works for the underground. As a matter of fact, she’s one of their leaders. I’ve known that for a long time, Rashevsky—”
“My Commissar!” Rashevsky croaked, purpling. “Give me a squad of three men, and I—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Rashevsky. She’d wind you around her little finger and go skipping off into hiding. Also, I don’t intend to do a thing about Dolohov—not yet. The agent who informed me, the only man who knew, is now in Siberia. He might have talked, and I don’t want it known that we know. You do understand, don’t you, Colonel?”
“Well, I… of course I can theorize and—”
“Why don’t you just say no?”
“I am confused,” said Rashevsky, hanging his head.
“Dolohov is an underground leader. She can take us to other leaders—pfft! We will close a ring around them, but not now. When we’re ready. Meanwhile, Rashevsky, play your role of the infatuated lover; it fits you well. But don’t tell the woman things which you should not like to see fall into the wrong hands. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“And don’t let anyone know what I have just told you. Clear?”
“Clear.”
“Why don’t you take the afternoon off and pay your sweetheart a surprise visit of love?”
“But I’ve hardly done my work!”
“I think the M.V.D. will manage without you for an afternoon. Good day, Colonel.”
A SLOW, steady drizzle. A cold October drizzle, chilling the flesh and stiffening the bones. Prelude to the Russian winter, Skinner realized. He wondered if he’d live to see that winter.