Necroscope

'Well, Boris,' said Borowitz, drawing his protégé back from his musing, 'and what do you think of that, eh?'

'Of what?'

'Huh!' the older man snorted. 'Look, I know this place is very restful, and that I'm a boring old fart at best, but for goodness' sake don't go to sleep on me! What do you think of the branch being free at last of the KGB?'

'Is it really?'

'Yes, really!' Borowitz rubbed his blunt hands together in satisfaction until they almost rustled. 'We're purged, you might say. We were only obliged to suffer them in the first place because Andropov likes to have a finger in every pie. Well, this pie's no longer to his taste. It has all worked out very well.'

'How did you do it?' (Dragosani knew the other was dying to tell him.)

Borowitz shrugged, almost as if to play down his own role in the affair — which in itself gave Dragosani to know that the exact opposite was the truth. 'Oh, a little of this, a little of that. Should I say that I put my job on the line? That I put the branch itself on the line? I gambled, if you like — except that I knew I couldn't lose.'

Then it wasn't a gamble,' said Dragosani. 'What, exactly, did you do?'

Borowitz chuckled. 'Boris, you know how I hate being exact. But yes, I'll tell you. I went to see Brezhnev before the hearing — and I told him how things were going to be.'

'Hah!' it was Dragosani's turn to snort. 'You told him? You told Leonid Brezhnev, Party Leader, how things were going to be? What things?'

Borowitz smiled his wolfs smile. 'Future things!' he said. 'Things which are not yet! I told him his political billing and cooing with Nixon would take him from strength to strength — but that he should prepare for Nixon's fall three years from now, when it will be shown to the world that he is corrupt. I told him that when that is over he will be in a position of some advantage, dealing with a bumbler in the White House. I told him that in preparation for American hard-liners yet to come, next year he will sign an agreement permitting sputniks to photograph missile sites in the USA, and vice versa — that he should do it while he still had the chance and while America is ahead in the space race. Détente again, you see. He's keen on it. He's similarly keen that they shouldn't get too far ahead in that race, and so I promised him a joint space venture, which will come in 1975. As for a whole crowd of Jews and dissidents who've been giving him problems, I told him we'd be rid of a great many of them — possibly as many as 125,000 — in the next three or four years!

'Oh, don't look so shocked or disgusted or whatever emotion that expression of yours is supposed to signify, Boris. We're not barbarians, my young friend. I'm not talking extermination or Siberia or pre-frontal lobotomy but eviction, emigration, kicking or allowing them to drag their arses out of here! Oh yes!

'All of these things I told him and more. And I guaranteed them — strictly between Leonid and myself, you understand — if only he'd let me do my job and get the KGB right off my back. What were these starch-faced policemen anyway but spies for their boss? And why should they spy on me, loyal as any man and a damn sight more than most? But over and above everything else, how could I hope to maintain any sort of secrecy — absolutely necessary in an organisation such as ours — with members of another branch peering over my shoulder and reporting back to their master everything I was doing, who couldn't possibly understand anything I was doing? They would only laugh, deride what they could not hope to fathom, blow any last vestige of secrecy sky high! And yet again our foreign adversaries would forge ahead; for make no mistake, Boris, the Americans and the British — yes, and the French and the Chinese, too — they also have their mind-spies!

'"But give me four years, Leonid," I said, "four years free of Yuri Andropov's monkeys, and I will give you the sprouting germ of an ESPionage network whose incred ible potential you cannot possibly imagine!"'

'Strong stuff!' Dragosani was suitably impressed. 'And his reply?'

'He said, "Gregor, old friend, old warhorse, old Com rade… all right, you shall have your four years. And I shall sit and wait and see to it that your bills are paid, and keep you and your branch in funds enough to run your Volgas and drink your vodka, and I shall watch all of these things you've promised or predicted come to pass, which will make me very grateful to you. And if in four years they have not come to pass — then I shall have your balls!"'

'And so you've put your faith in Vlady's predictions,' said Dragosani, nodding. 'Are you so sure, then, that this seer of ours is infallible?' 'Oh, yes!' answered Borowitz. 'He's almost as good at predicting the future as you are at sniffing out the secrets of the dead.'

'Huh!' This time Dragosani was not impressed. 'And why then didn't he predict that mess at the Chateau? Surely he could have foreseen a disaster of that magnitude?'

'But he did predict it,' answered Borowitz, 'in a round about way. Two weeks ago he told me I would shortly lose both my right-and left-hand men. And I did. He also said I would appoint others — but this time from the rank and file, as it were.'

Dragosani couldn't conceal his interest. 'You have someone in mind?'

Borowitz nodded. 'You,' he answered, 'and perhaps Igor Vlady himself.'

'I want no rival,' said Dragosani at once.

'Rivalry does not come into it. Your talents are diverse. He does not profess to be a necromancer, you cannot read the future. The reason there must be two of you is to ensure continuity if anything should happen to either one of you.'

'Yes, and we had two predecessors,' Dragosani growled. 'What were their talents — and did they also start out without rivalry?'

Borowitz sighed. 'In the beginning,' he patiently began to explain, 'when I was first pulling the branch together, I was short of actual effective talent in the ranks: my first troop of agents, ESPers, were untried. Those with real talent — like Vlady, who I've had from the beginning, and who improves all the time; and, more recently, like yourself — were too important to tie down with routine administration. Ustinov, also with us from the start but purely as an administrator, and later Gerkhov, fitted their positions precisely. They had no ESP-talent whatsoever but both seemed to have open minds — difficult to find in Russia these days, not that can stay on the right side o the political fence at the same time — and I had hopes that at least one of them would become as deeply inter ested and involved with our work as I am. When jealousy intervened and they became rivals, I decided to let them weed themselves out without intervention. Natural selection, you might say. But you and Vlady are different kettles of fish entirely. I will not permit rivalry between you. Put it out of your mind.'

'Nevertheless,' Dragosani insisted, 'when you are gone one of us will have to take the reins.'

'I do not intend to go anywhere,' said Borowitz. 'Not for a very long time. By then… we shall see what we shall see.' He fell silent, musing, chin in hands, watching the river's slow swirl.

'Why did Ustinov turn on you?' the younger man finally asked. 'Why not simply get rid of Gerkhov? Surely that were easier, less risky?'

'There were two reason why he couldn't just remove his rival,' said Borowitz. 'First, he had been suborned by an old enemy of mine — the man you "examined" — who I'd suspected for some time of plotting my removal. We actually hated each other, me and this old MVD torturer! It was unavoidable: he would kill me or I him. Because of this I had Vlady watch him, concentrate on him, read him. In his immediate future he read treachery and death. The treachery would be directed against me; the death would be mine or his. A pity Igor isn't more specific. Anyway, I arranged for it to be his.