Refusing to lose his point, Lu said: ‘But Edith knew?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. Edith was different, from anyone else.
‘Didn’t she worry?’
‘All the time,’ admitted Charlie.
‘That’s how it is with me. Why I’ll be glad to quit.’
Charlie looked intently at the other man, held by another fear, that Harry Lu had lost his nerve. There was no outward indication, no obvious apprehension, but the admission was worrying: he didn’t want the man collapsing on him, not now. He said encouragingly: ‘You’re going to get your papers: everything’s going to be all right.’
‘I should tell her,’ said Lu.
‘Time enough later,’ urged Charlie. ‘Let’s get this thing over, first.
Charlie’s concern registered, for the first time. Lu said: ‘She’s safe.’ He offered the photograph and said: ‘Did I show you this one?’
Politely Charlie took the print. It was different from the earlier picture. This one showed the woman in a strictly formal pose, porcelain-faced, jet-black hair dressed high on her head, her wide-belted cheong-sam reaching the ground. The child called Open Flower was at her side, a miniature replica. Charlie said: ‘Don’t endanger her — either of them — with knowledge.’
Now it was Lu’s turn to show concern. ‘They wouldn’t move against them!’
‘Why not?’ demanded Charlie, in brutal honesty. He was surprised at the man thinking otherwise; perhaps it was time that Harry Lu did get out.
‘I should see they’re all right.’
‘Not personally,’ insisted Charlie, at once. He’d be glad when Cartright got here: better still when the army team arrived.
‘Call at least,’ insisted the man.
‘Don’t say where we are.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said the man.
He’d deserved that, accepted Charlie. ‘Maybe you should call,’ he agreed.
Charlie ordered another drink, able from where he sat to watch the man go to the telephone bank. Had he exaggerated, about a risk to Lu’s family? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Had he been asked two weeks ago, he would have dismissed the likelihood of six men being killed to block an escape route. Mind focussed, he went again over the conversation with Wilson, trying — and failing — to reconcile the American denial of involvement. How much longer, before things started to make sense? He concentrated upon the whisky he held before him in both hands, and decided it would be a long time if he went on drinking like this. In a moment he had to confront Irena Kozlov, who had the benefit of a night’s sleep. He smiled up, at Lu’s return.
‘Everything’s fine,’ said the man, whose apartment was in Wanchai, off the road leading to the Happy Valley racecourse. As Lu spoke, Fredericks, Levine and Fish were arriving outside, spreading out at once to establish a triangular surveillance pattern.
And in her seaview room at the Macao Hyatt, five floors above where the two men sat, Irena Kozlov replaced the receiver after the conversation with her husband in the Tokyo apartment, warmed by the contact. It was wonderful, after the difficulties they’d had, to know that he loved her so much now: so determined to protect her against any trickery that he’d refused to go across to the Americans until she was beyond the risk of any interception. She smiled, remembering the assurance; relax, you’re safe, he’d said.
‘Darling Yuri,’ she said, aloud. ‘Darling Yuri.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
To inculcate a mentality which enables a sane person to kill, in dispassionate cold blood, requires a prolonged period of specialized psychological indoctrination: indeed the KGB relegate the practical instruction, the unarmed combat and weapon handling expertise and knowledge of debilitating drugs and poisons, to the very end of any training course. And without it being considered in any way an absurd contradiction, that indoctrination makes a case for the moral acceptability of the act in dictated circumstances while supporting the forbidden criminality of wanton, needless murder.
The Russian instruction — refined and perfected since the maniacal, mass slaughter days of Stalin and of people like Genrikh Yagoda, a trained pharmacist who once ran the forerunner to the KGB and enjoyed experimenting upon prisoners in Lubyanka — is regarded as the best by other intelligence agencies, all of which employ assassins.
A predominant reason making it superior to others is that Soviet psychologists are able fully to capitalize upon an attitude inherent and peculiar to Russians: a practically mystical love of country. The persistent theme throughout the lectures and debates, therefore, is that there is a positive duty to eliminate enemies of the state: to kill, for one’s country, is justified. It makes murder logical. Usually.
Olga Balan was a dedicated party member, an absolutely committed and loyal officer of the KGB but someone unable, no matter how hard she tried — and she tried very hard, spurred by that dedication and commitment — to forget her parents’ adherence to the Russian Orthodox faith and its inherited affect upon her. When she entered the service, she worried the stigma of their belief would militate against her: maybe even prevent her being accepted in the first place. That it didn’t only indicated an oversight in the background checks Olga knew were always carried out, and for a long time after her enlistment she lived in constant apprehension of the damaging fact emerging, to destroy her. Over the years that fear diminished, but the memories of the childhood church visits and the before-meal prayers and the learned-by-rote scriptures would not go away. Now those recollections stayed as an irritation, a dull but nevertheless nagging problem, like an aching tooth no dentistry could relieve. As someone who embraced communism completely she had no religion, of course. And had succeeded, as her KGB career progressed, in subjugating the dichotomy in almost everything. The exception was to kill.
Olga underwent her psychological indoctrination at a complex known as Balashikha, east of the Moscow ring road, just off Gofkosvkoye Schosse. At first there was positive revulsion — an absolute rejection of the justification thesis — so much so she expected her dismissal from the course, which would have meant her automatic ejection from the service. But then the escape occurred to her. Olga realized she was being trained in theory, not actual practice, for entry into the ultimately secret Department 8 of Directorate S of the First Chief Directorate: she could pretend.
She easily and unworriedly passed the assessments and the later, practical training with commendations, and upon her reference file in Dzerzhinsky Square she was listed as someone able — and capable — of killing. But only in theory. Until now: now it was no longer pretence. Now it was reaclass="underline" frighteningly real.
That very psychological indoctrination compounded her difficulty beyond any childhood religious prohibitions. Enemy of the State was always the requirement for the necessary justification. Was Irena Kozlov that? By defecting, she was, according to strict definition, but Olga could not accept the easy way out. Irena Kozlov had been tricked into crossing: so the formula didn’t fit.