"I know, I know," he had said. "The fiercest man on earth is a Russian with three potatoes in his belly."
It was a dirty war beyond anything seen since the barbaric hordes had slaughtered whole populations. To see what the Germans had done was beyond the hardness of even the NKVD. And then, of course, came the touchy stalking war with the west. Denia knew it would be a long one.
Three potatoes, he thought, as the Zil limousine moved quietly to the underground garage of the building on the square. He took a small elevator, one man only, to the codes room, and there he met a colonel in charge of one thing, a general in charge of another thing, and a halfdozen captains in charge of something else. There were maps and charts, and there were serious faces and people saluting all over the place and giving low toned ominous warnings about this and that.
"Excuse me, gentlemen, I've got to pee," he said. "Go on with your briefing." He left the door open so he could hear everything they said. Some men turned their eyes away. Babies, he thought. Little ladies. The big bad KGB had turned into a bunch of little ladies.
He went back to the table.
"All right. Now I have heard about twenty reasons each of you is important to the survival of the state. But I have not been given any hard information. Let me give you two bits of hard information, five minutes apiece to think, and then we will do this all over again. One. My Treska unit is on the attack, mopping up against a defeated enemy. Therefore things do not go according to every little dot on every little piece of paper. You don't hear from people for weeks. That's all right. Secondly, what does Vassilivich say? He is the only worrier I respect."
No one waited five minutes. Vassilivich had not made his checks for three days. Auxiliary units had discovered the following men dead, they told him.
Denia listened to the long list. He took a red pencil from one of the officers standing over a map. He asked for the approximate times of the deaths, then he wrote in the times next to towns Naples, Farfa, Athens, Rome.
"You said Ivan Mikhailov?"
"Yes, Major Mikhailov is dead."
"How?"
"Blunt instrument of some sort. Tremendous pressure."
"Of course. It would have to be," said Denia, remembering the incredible strength of the young giant. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. There was an autopsy. Major Mikhailov had enough rat poison in his veins to fell a battalion, but apparently it did not kill him."
"And no word from Vassilivich?"
"None."
Denia did not wish to express his suspicions at this moment, because things once said could never be brought back to safe silence and who knew what any of these heel clicking, saluting ladyniks would do.
"You're all jabbering about some great sudden assault by massive units, but I'll tell you something none of you has even mentioned yet. Look at my markings on the map. Look at the times. Look."
There was much talking about CIA backup teams, a rolling assault by multiple units, each going into action when the other had completed its mission.
One officer with an acne-ravaged face and sunken cheeks and thinning gray hair combed starkly to each side talked of a multinational chain reaction on isolated units. A conspiracy against Russia, possibly emanating from the Vatican.
Denia belched. He hadn't heard that sort of nonsense since a brief stop-over in London, where British journalists had offered to sell any sort of story about anyone for a price.
An aide asked what the journalists meant.
"Would you like to read about America poisoning the Atlantic? The Israelis committing secret acts of war? The Danish government murdering children for cannibalism? The Dutch being secret racists? British journalism is the most lively money can buy. You name it and we'll write it. Books, of course, cost more than articles. But I guarantee, m'lord, there's nothing some of us can't write for a price. Want to read about the Pope's love affairs? His illegitimate children?"
"What love affairs? What illegitimate children?" the aide had asked.
"You pay for 'em and we'll write about 'em."
And this was all right for British journalism, but for serious men who dealt with life-and-death realities, it was appalling. So Denia belched, and he noticed an officer wince.
"Have any of you ever heard of an automobile?" asked Denia.
All the officers in the room without windows nodded that they had. A few cleared their throats. They avoided revealing glances at each other. Of course, they had heard of automobiles. What was the old man talking about?
"Can you all read wristwatches?" Denia asked.
Again the nods.
"Can you count?"
Yes, they could count. Would the most honored Marshal be more specific?
Denia put the red crayon on Rome.
"Imagine this red mark is a car. Puttputtputt goes the car. Rrrrrr goes the engine. Down this road, it goes whoooossh," said Denia. The pencil went from Rome to Naples. "Now we are in sunny Napoli. It is noon. Last night we were in Rome. Ah, here we go, we're heading north to Farfa. Puttputtputt. Whoooosh. Vroom. We are not even driving especially quickly. Now we go back to Rome and get on an airplane. It is a pretty airplane. It flies to Athens. Wheeee. Vroooom. Whooosh. Now it lands at Athens. What a pretty flight."
"Oh," said one officer who suddenly realized what Denia was talking about. Of course. They had all been so involved in gigantic plots and multiple killer teams that no one had noticed one simple fact. The old warhorse had seen it at once.
"It's not a massive counterattack at all," said the young officer.
"Welcome to reality," said Marshal Denia.
"It's only one team. They went from one unit to another, of course. And undoubtedly that executive officer is helping them because he is the only one who is connected to the various teams. He has defected and is leading that killer team to each of our units," the young officer said.
"Wrong," said Denia loudly. "Absolutely wrong."
"Why?" said the young officer. Denia thought quickly. Something like this could get out of hand. And he had worked too long with Vassilivich to surrender the man to some Kremlin suspicion, where people slept cozily and safely and did not know what it was like to have someone put the barrel of a pistol to your belly and threaten to spread your insides into the nearest gutter.
"Because," said Denia.
"Because why, comrade marshal?" asked the officer.
"Because this is the way it was," he said, thinking clearly. "The Sunflower, our counterpart in the CIA, was becoming outmoded, obsolete. Why was it becoming obsolete? Because America had a much more effective killer team. What to do? What best way to take advantage of this new technique? Let our Treska expose itself by getting rid of what America would have to retire anyway. How to do this? Take away their weapons under the pretext of not wanting another international incident. Why else would Americans leave themselves defenseless? Is anyone here so stupid as to believe America would expose itself defenseless to this world?"
One officer thought America could be that stupid. He listed events of American foreign policy.
Denia said if the officer wanted to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he should do so. This was KGB.
"What Vassilivich has done, what this great and brilliant and courageous and loyal officer has done, is simply to save the party and the people of Russia. While ladyniks in the safety of the Dzerzhinsky Square building spin out fairy tales like Englishmen."
A liaison officer from the Red Navy took umbrage at being called English. Even being a marshal in the KGB did not give him the right to call another human being an Englishman.
"I am sorry your feelings are hurt. I only used English as a reference point. I did not even mean Englishman but English journalism as an example of silliness. I have great respect for the Red Navy and, it might surprise you, for the British Navy, and, it might surprise you even more, for most British. Now is everyone happy?"