After a moment's thought Andropov shrugged. 'Per haps I won't,' he said, no longer smiling.
'On the other hand,' said Borowitz over his shoulder as he turned and left the room, 'perhaps I would — except for one thing.'
'One thing? What thing is that?'
'Why, that we all have our futures to consider, of course! And also because I consider myself wiser far than those three foolish "wise" men…'
And grimacing savagely to himself as he stamped down the corridor toward the stairs, suddenly Borowitz's wolfs grin returned as he recalled something else his seers had told him about Yuri Andropov: that shortly after attaining premiership he would sicken and die. Yes, within two or three years at most. Borowitz could only hope it would be so… or perhaps he could do better than just hope.
Perhaps he should make preparations of his own, starting right now. Perhaps he should speak to a certain chemist friend in Bulgaria. A slow poison… undetectable… painless… bringing on a swift deterioration of vital organs…
Certainly it was worth thinking about.
On the following Wednesday evening Boris Dragosani drove his spartan little Russian puddle-jumper the twenty-odd miles out of the city to Gregor Borowitz's spacious but rustic dacha in Zhukovka. As well as being pleasantly situated on a pine-covered hillock overlooking the slug gish Moscow River, the place was also 'safe' from prying eyes and ears — especially the electric sort. Borowitz would have nothing made of metal in the place — with the exception of his metal-detector. Ostensibly he used this to seek out old coins along the river-bank, especially near the ancient fording places, but in fact it was for his own security and peace of mind. He knew the location of every nail in every log in his dacha. The only bugs that could get anywhere near the place were the sort that crawled in the rich soil in Borowitz's overgrown garden.
For all that, still the old General took Dragosani walking in order to talk to him, preferring the outdoors to the ever-dubious privacy of four walls however well he'd checked them over. For even here in Zhukovka there was a KGB presence; indeed, a strong one. Many senior KGB officials — a few generals among them — had their dachas here, not to mention a host of retired state-rewarded ex-agents. None of them were friends of Borowitz; all would be delighted to supply Yuri Andro with whatever titbits of information they could unearth.
'But at least the branch itself is now rid of them,' Borowitz confided, leading the way down a path along the river bank. He took Dragosani to a place where there were flat stones to sit on, where they could watch the sun going down as the evening turned the river to a dark green mirror.
They made an odd couple: the squat old soldier, gnarled, typically Russian, all horn and yellow ivory and time-tooled leather; and the handsome young man, almost effete by comparison, delicate of features (when they were not transformed by the rigours of his work), long-fingered hands of a concert pianist, slim but deceptively strong, with shoulders broad as his smile was narrow. No, apart from a mutual respect, they seemed to have very little in common.
Borowitz respected Dragosani for his talent; he had no doubt but that it was one which could help make Russia truly strong again. Not merely 'super power' strong but invulnerable to any would-be invader, indestructible to any weapons system, invincible in the pursuit of a steady, stealthy, world-enveloping expansionism. Oh, the latter was already here, but Dragosani could speed up the process immeasurably. Borowitz's hopes for the branch were firmly founded. It was still espionage, yes — but it was the other side of the coin from Andropov's Secret Police. Or rather, the edge of the coin. Espionage — but with the emphasis on 'Esp'. That was why Borowitz 'liked' the unlikeable Dragosani: he would never look right in a dark-blue overcoat and fedora, but by the same token no KGB man could ever fathom the wells of secrets to which Dragosani was privy. And of course, Borowitz had himself 'discovered' the necromancer and brought him into the fold. That was another reason he liked him he was his greatest find.
As for the paler, younger man — he too had his targets, his ambitions. What they were he kept to himself — kept them locked in that macabre mind — but they were certainly not Borowitz's visions of Russian world dominance and universal empire, of a mother Russia whose sons could never again be threatened by any nation or nations however strong.
For one thing, Dragosani did not consider himself a genuine Russian. His was a heritage older far than the oppression of Communism and the blunt tribes who used its hammer and sickle sigil not only as tools but as a banner and a threat. And perhaps that was one of the reasons he 'liked' the equally unlikeable Borowitz, whose politics were quite un-politic. As for respect — there was a measure of that in him for the old warhorse, yes, but not for ancient heroics on the field of battle, or the practised ease with which Borowitz could bluff the very sting out of a scorpion's tail. Instead Dragosani respected his boss much as a steeplejack respects the higher rungs of his ladder. And much like a steeplejack, he knew he could never afford to step back and admire his work. But why should he, when one day the chimney would be built and he could stand at its top and enjoy his triumph from its own unassailable apex? Meanwhile Borowitz could instruct, guide his feet up the rungs, and Dragosani would climb — as fast and as high as the ladder could bear his weight. Or perhaps he respected him as a tight-rope walker respects his rope. And how then must he watch his step?
What friction there was between the two sprang mainly from disparate backgrounds, upbringing, loyalties and lifestyles. Borowitz was a born and bred Muscovite who had been orphaned at four, had cut bundles of firewood for a living at seven, and had been a soldier from the age of sixteen. Dragosani had been named for his birthplace on the Oltul River where it flowed down from the Carpatti Meridionali towards the Danube and the border with Bulgaria. In the old days that had been Wallachia, with Hungary to the north and Serbia and Bosnia to the west.
And that was how he saw himself: as a Wallach, or as a Romanian at the very least. And as a historian and patriot (while yet his patriotism was for a country whose name had long since faded on old maps) he knew that his homeland's history had been long and very bloody. Trace Wallachia's history and what does one find? — that it has been bartered, annexed, stolen, re-taken and stolen again, raked over and ravished and ruined — but that always it has sprung back into a being of its own. The country was a phoenix! Its very soil was alive, dark with blood, given strength by blood. Yes, the strength of the people had been in the land, and that of the land in its people. It was a land they could fight for, which by its nature could almost fight for itself. Any set of historical maps would show why this was so: in those old days, before the aeroplane and the tank — ringed about by mountains and marshes, with the Black Sea on the eastern flank, bog lands to the west and the Danube in the south — the region had been almost completely insular, safe as a fortress.
And so, through his pride in his heritage, Dragosani was first a Wallach (and possibly the only surviving Wallach in the world), second a Romanian, but hardly a Russian at all. What were they after all, Gregor Borowitz included, but the settled spume of wave after wave of invaders, sons of Huns and Goths, Slavs and Franks, Mongols and Turks? Of course there'd be the blood of those dogs in Boris Dragosani, too, but mostly he was a Wallach! He could only liken himself to the older man in the one respect that they had both been orphans of sorts; but even in that area the circumstances were very different. Borowitz had at least had parents of his own; as a baby he had known them, even though they were now long forgotten. But Dragosani… he had been a foundling. Found on a doorstep in a Romanian village, little more than a day old, and brought up and educated by a rich farmer and landowner; that had been his lot. And not a bad one overall.