"The Bulgarians are trustworthy?" Andropov asked, suddenly worried.
"Yes, they are, Comrade Chairman. We have a long-standing operational relationship with them, and they are expert at this sort of thing-more than we are, in fact. They have had more practice. When someone must die, it's often the Bulgars who take care of matters for us."
"Yes, Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy has told me that. I just have no direct knowledge of it."
"You could, of course, meet with Colonel Strokov any time you wish," Bubovoy suggested.
Andropov shook his head. "Better that I should not, I think."
"As you wish, Comrade Chairman." That figures, Bubovoy thought. Andropov was a party man, not used to getting his hands dirty. Politicians were all the same-bloodthirsty, but personally tidy, depending on others to carry out their nasty wishes. Well, that was his job, the colonel decided, and since politicians controlled the good things in his society, he needed to please them to get the honey from the hive. And he had as big a sweet tooth as anyone else in the Soviet Union. At the end of this mission might be general's stars, a nice flat in Moscow-even a modest dacha in the Lenin Hills. He'd be glad to return to Moscow, and so would his wife. If the price of it was the death of some foreigner who was a political inconvenience to his country, well, that was just too bad. He should have been more careful about who he was offending.
"Thank you for coming and for giving me your expertise, Comrade Colonel. You will be hearing from me."
Bubovoy stood. "I serve the Soviet Union," he said, and made his way through the hidden door.
Rozhdestvenskiy was in the secretaries' room, waiting for him.
"How did it go, Ilya?"
"I am not sure I am allowed to say" was the guarded reply.
"If this is about Operation -666, then you are allowed, Ilya Fedorovich," Rozhdestvenskiy assured him, leading him out the door into the corridor.
"Then the meeting went well, Aleksey Nikolay'ch. More than that, I can only say with the Chairman's approval." This might be a security test, after all, however much a friend Rozhdestvenskiy might be.
"I told him you could be relied upon, Ilya. This could be good for both of us."
"We serve, Aleksey, just like everybody else in this building."
"Let me get you to your car. You can make the noon flight easily." A few minutes later, he was back in Andropov's office.
"Well?" the Chairman asked.
"He says the meeting went well, but he will not say another word with out your permission. Ilya Fedorovich is a serious professional, Comrade Chairman. Am I to be your contact for the mission? "
"Yes, you are, Aleksey," Andropov confirmed. "I will send a signal to that effect." Andropov didn't feel the need to run the operation himself. His was a big-picture mind, not an operational one. "What do you know of this Colonel Boris Strokov?"
"Bulgarian? The name is familiar. He's a senior intelligence officer who has in the past specialized in assassination operations. He has ample experience-and obviously Ilya knows him well."
"How does one specialize in assassinations?" the Chairman asked. It was an aspect of the KGB he hadn't been briefed in on.
"His real work is something else, obviously, but the DS has a small group of officers with experience in this sort of thing. He is the most experienced. His operational record is flawless. If memory serves, he's personally eliminated seven or eight people whose deaths were necessary-mostly Bulgarians, I think. Probably a Turk or two as well, but no Westerners that I know of."
"Is it difficult to do?" Yuriy Vladimirovich asked.
"I have no such experience myself," Rozhdestvenskiy admitted. He didn't add that he didn't especially want any. "Those who do say that their concern is not so much in accomplishing the mission as in completing it-that is, avoiding police investigation afterwards. Modern police agencies are fairly effective at investigating murders, you see. In this case, you can expect a most vigorous investigation."
"Bubovoy wants this Strokov fellow to go on the mission and then eliminate the assassin immediately afterward."
Rozhdestvenskiy nodded thoughtfully. "That makes good sense. We have discussed that option ourselves, as I recall."
"Yes." Andropov closed his eyes for a moment. Again, the image paraded itself before his mind. Certainly it would solve a lot of political problems. "Yes, my next job will be to get the Politburo's approval for the mission."
"Quickly, Comrade Chairman?" Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy asked, unable to contain his curiosity.
"Tomorrow afternoon, I think."
Down in communications, Zaitzev had allowed his daily routine to absorb his consciousness. It suddenly struck him how mindless his job was. They wanted this job to be done by machines, and he'd become that machine. He had it all committed to memory, which operational designator went to which case officer upstairs and what the operations were all about. So much information slid into his mind along the way that it rather amazed him. It had happened so gradually that he'd never really noticed. He noticed now.
But it was 15-8-82-666 that kept swimming around his mind…
"Zaitzev?" a voice asked. The communicator turned to see Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy.
"Yes, Comrade Colonel?"
"A dispatch for rezident Sofia." He handed across the message form, properly made out.
"On the machine or the pad, comrade?"
The colonel paused for a moment, weighing the two options. He came down on the side of consistency: "The pad, I think."
"As you wish, Comrade Colonel. I will have it out in a few minutes."
"Good. It will be waiting for Bubovoy when he gets back to his desk." He made the comment without thinking about it. People all over the world talk too much, and no amount of training can entirely stop them from doing so.
So, the Sofia rezident was just here? Zaitzev didn't have to ask. "Yes, Comrade Colonel. Shall I call you to confirm the dispatch?"
"Yes, thank you, Comrade Major."
"I serve the Soviet Union," Zaitzev assured him.
Rozhdestvenskiy made his way back upstairs, while Zaitzev went through the normal, mind-numbing routine of encryption.
MOST SECRET
IMMEDIATE AND URGENT
FROM: OFFICE OF CHAIRMAN, Moscow CENTRE
To: REZIDENT SOFIA
REFERENCE: OPERATIONAL DESIGNATOR 15-8-82-666
FOR ALL FUTURE COMMUNICATIONS YOUR OPERATIONAL CONTACT WILL BE COLONEL ROZHDESTVENSKIY. BY ORDER OF THE CHAIRMAN.
It was just a housekeeping message, but coded "Immediate and Urgent." That meant it was important to Chairman Andropov, and the reference made it an operation, not just a query to some rezident.
They really want to do it, Zaitzev realized.
What the hell could he do about it? No one in this room-no one in the entire building-could forestall this operation. But outside the building…?
Zaitzev lit a cigarette. He'd be taking the metro home as usual. Would that American be there as well?
He was contemplating treason, he thought chillingly. The crime had a fearsome sound to it, with an even more fearsome reality. But the other side of that coin was to sit here and read over the dispatches while an innocent man was killed… and, no, he could not do that.
Zaitzev took a message blank off a centimeter-thick pad of them on his desk. He set the single sheet of paper on the desk surface and wrote in English, using a #1 soft penciclass="underline" IF YOU FIND THIS INTERESTING, WEAR A GREEN TIE TOMORROW. That was as far as his courage stretched this afternoon. He folded the form and tucked it inside his cigarette pack, careful to do everything with normal motions, because anything the least bit unusual in this room was noticed. Next, he scribbled something on another blank form, then crumpled and tossed it into the waste can, and went back to his usual work. For the next three hours, Oleg Ivan'ch would rethink his action every time he reached in his pocket for a smoke. Every time, he'd consider taking out the folded sheet of paper and ripping it to small bits before relegating it to the waste can and then the burn bag. But every time, he'd leave it there, telling himself that he'd done nothing yet. Above all, he tried to set his mind free, to do his regular work and deliberately put himself on auto-pilot, trying to let the day go by. Finally, he told himself that his fate was in hands other than his own. If he got home without anything unusual happening, he'd take the folded form out of his cigarette pack and burn it in his kitchen, and that would be the end of it. About four in the afternoon, Zaitzev looked up at the water-stained ceiling of Communications and whispered something akin to a prayer.