Vasili Dmitrevich Malik reached once more for the telephone that had been used so much that day. And made his only – but disastrous – mistake.
The security sections of all KGB directorates are run upon military guidelines – uniforms are invariably worn, for instance – with military requirements. One of those requirements is monthly attendance at a firearms installation to ensure that a necessary standard of marksmanship is maintained. The installation is established at Gofkovskoye Shosse and it was here that Malik located the newly promoted head of his directorate’s internal discipline, Colonel Lev Konstantinovich Panchenko.
In his own office, which was just one hundred yards from that in which Malik had minutes before completed his conversation, Victor Kazin went physically cold, actually shivering, at Panchenko’s immediate warning on the private, untraceable telephone.
‘I’m to arrest Agayans,’ reported the colonel. ‘Something to do with Afghanistan.’
Kazin swallowed against the sensation of paralysis, driving himself to think. ‘Do it,’ he said, hoarse-voiced. ‘But do it the way I’ve already ordered you to do it.’
‘I need more time!’
‘Do it!’
Georgi Solov still did not completely understand – in fact, he understood very little – but he was fairly sure that what could have created some personal difficulties for him had been avoided. He smiled across the desk in the Kabul rezidentura and said: ‘Everything cancelled.’
‘Of course,’ said Yuri curtly. He guessed Solov wanted to make it appear a joint intervention.
‘And you’re to return at once?’ smiled Solov, gesturing to the message that lay between them.
‘That’s what it says,’ agreed Yuri. He didn’t try to keep the impatience from his voice: he couldn’t think now why he’d earlier felt pity for the dance-to-any-tune idiot.
‘Seems as if we were right to intervene,’ attempted Solov, directly.
‘I was, wasn’t I?’ corrected Yuri. If there were to be credit given, Solov literally had to be weak in the head to imagine it would be shared.
7
He could not lose the numbness, the actual sensation of shivering coldness. It was far worse than the nervous, habitual shaking to which Kazin was now so accustomed that he was scarcely any longer aware of it. How had it happened! How had such an intricate but perfect scenario collapsed? How had Malik discovered it, to the apparent degree of issuing arrest orders, arrest orders that should have been in his name, not that of the very man it had all been designed to destroy: the very man who should have been arrested, destined for a gulag. Or worse!
Who’d talked: defected to Malik’s camp, so soon? Agayans? An internal spy in the cipher section? A leak from the Kabul rezidentura to which the man’s son was attached? Panchenko, he thought abruptly. He’d ordered Panchenko to go ahead as planned. Was that the mistake! Had he himself stupidly stumbled into a Malik-designed trap? Or…? Kazin tried to halt the unanswerable demands flooding into his mind, someone desperate to close the watertight doors of a sinking vessel against the destructive inrush of water. Good word, destructive: appropriate. That’s what he risked being, destroyed, if he continued sitting there, letting the panic engulf him. Stop! Had to stop to think properly: analyse as best he could what might have happened. Then work it out. Dispassionately. No fear. No panic. Not more than it was possible to avoid, at least. Then plan. Blindly perhaps, in the immediate moment. But still try to plan. Minimize the potential dangers. If only… Kazin got the doors finally closed, actually panting like someone relieved after expending a great effort. Analyse was another good word, just as appropriate. One question – one consideration – at a time. Agayans first, then.
Agayans was a traditionalist, one of the old school acolytes, stretched to the absolute extreme of his ability, who ensured safety by unquestioning obedience. But there were those medical warnings of the man’s increasing uncertainty. Might Agayans not have worried at the orders from one joint Chief Deputy to initiate retribution proposals upon a memorandum issued by the other? And seen safety in approaching Malik? Kazin’s coldness spread further through him, at a further recollection; hadn’t Agayans actually queried whether Malik should be included in the supposed Afghanistan planning? Quickly – to Kazin’s sighed relief – came the contradiction, the strongest and most convincing argument against it being Agayans. Malik would not have ordered the arrest of his prime witness; rather he’d be embalming Agayans in featherdown, ensuring every comfort and protection.
The cipher room? Again unlikely to the point of impossibility. There were rotating shifts so no one single man would have encoded all the messages to Kabul and so been able to evolve a complete picture of what was intended. And even if one man had handled everything, there would have been no reason for protest. Or – more important still – have any reason to link Malik with it.
Kabul had to be the most likely source. From that cosseted, spoiled bastard of a son. But yet again that was impossible: any message from Kabul would invariably have been routed through Agayans. Who could then have intercepted it?
So how? And how much? Useless conjecture: he wanted positives and all he could speculate were negatives. Positives then. Protect himself. Against the unknown and the unseen but protect himself as much as he felt possible. Definite links with Agayans had to be the most dangerous and he’d already planned here: planned, he reflected bitterly, to prove his complete uninvolvement in a politically absurd proposal which should – but couldn’t any longer – have entrapped Malik into appearing to be the architect.
The most direct link was the memorandum in which Agayans had set out the proposal and to which Kazin had been careful only to give unprovable verbal acceptance. He took it now from his safe, with no need to read it again. Across it he scrawled ‘Unacceptable. Unequivocable rejection’ and added the date to coincide with that of the day Agayans had written and annotated it. Also from the safe he extracted a backlog of documentation for his secretariat’s attention and dispersal, carefully sorting through until he reached the appropriate and matching date, inserting the Agayans document into the place it would have properly occupied if his supposed refusal had occurred on the day he received it. Just as carefully he placed the whole pile in the Out tray, for the following morning’s collection. Kazin pulled his appointment diary towards him, studying the two entries. Both read: ‘Review of position in Afghanistan. No further action.’
What would the entries in Agayans’ diary read? The floodwaters began to seep in again as Kazin realized there would be no opportunity for him to seize and have undetectably changed whatever notes or documentation Agayans might have left, which had always been the intention. A fresh numbness began to move through the plump, sweat-dampened man and then the telephone sounded.
‘There’s been an unforeseen incident,’ reported Panchenko, using the coded phrase that had been agreed between them.
Relief – slight but still relief – moved through Kazin. He said: ‘Thank you for telling me,’ and replaced the receiver. There still remained too many uncertainties, too many unknown dangers.
The first two days there had been anxiety, a will-there-won’t-there-be tenseness, but the designated book had been properly upright in its rack in the United Nations library. On the following day Yevgennie Levin’s attitude changed to one of expectation because Proctor, who had never let him down, had after all promised three days at the outside. And this was the third day. The boring, unread census document was there, like before; still upright, still undisturbed, still unread.