General Surikov chain-lit another cigarette. “You’re absolutely certain you weren’t followed here?”
Hollis shrugged. “I do my best. How about you?”
“I certainly can’t take overt evasive actions like you can. I have to walk normally.”
“What’s your business in this quarter, Comrade General?”
“I have reservations at the Berlin Hotel restaurant in one hour. I’m meeting my granddaughter for dinner.”
“Good. I like that.”
Surikov asked, “How do you know they threw him in a furnace?”
“What? Oh, Penkovsky. I don’t know. I was told by my boss. But my boss lies just like yours does. Sounds good. Supposed to make me hate the KGB more.”
“And do you?”
“Not personally,” Hollis replied. “They haven’t fucked up my whole life like they have yours and everyone else’s from Vladivostok to East Berlin. Do you hate them?”
Surikov didn’t reply, which Hollis found intriguing. He couldn’t get a handle on Surikov’s motivation.
Surikov said, “Your note said it was urgent.”
Hollis nodded. They had worked out a simple expedient for arranging unscheduled rendezvous. Hollis would simply messenger a note to his counterpart, Colonel Andreyev, in the Soviet Defense Ministry and request an inconsequential bit of information regarding the ongoing arms limitation talks. Andreyev would naturally buck the request up the line, and it would eventually come across General Surikov’s desk. Surikov would place Hollis’ note over a small, detailed map of central Moscow. A pinprick in the note would pinpoint the meeting place. The time was always five-thirty of that day. If there was a pencil smudge in any corner of the note, the meeting was for the following day. The word “response” anywhere in the note meant urgent.
Hollis said, “Yes, urgent, but nothing for you to worry about.” Hollis thought he’d probably upset Surikov’s day.
Surikov turned a page of the oversize newspaper and held it up to catch the light. “What is it then?”
“Who won the battle of Borodino?”
Surikov glanced at Hollis. “What?”
Hollis said, “Tolstoy gives an accurate description of a French Pyrrhic victory, yet there are some Russians who think that it was a Russian victory. How do you reconcile these facts? Who won the battle?”
Surikov replied, “What are you talking about?”
“Reality. Truth, I need the truth. The real truth, not the Soviet truth. I need some information on a former Red Air Force training facility.”
“Yes?”
“North of Borodino.”
Surikov did not reply.
“A former ground school. The Komitet uses it now for other purposes. You know the one I mean, don’t you?”
Again Surikov made no reply.
Hollis said, “If you know nothing about it, I’ll leave now.”
Surikov cleared his throat. “I know something about it.”
“But it must not be too important, General, or you’d have told me long ago.”
Surikov let a full minute pass before he replied, “It is so important, Colonel, so potentially dangerous for the future of Soviet-American relations and world peace, that it is better left alone.”
Hollis did not look toward Surikov, but he could tell by his tone of voice that Surikov, usually cool as ice, was agitated. Hollis said, “Well, that’s very good of you to stand guard over the peace. However, something leaked, and before it gets misunderstood or before it gets into the wrong hands, I want to control it. But first I have to understand it.”
Surikov refolded his newspaper, and Hollis allowed himself a glance at the man and saw on his face a troubled expression. Hollis said, “Tell me what you know and how you know it.”
“First tell me what you know.”
“I know to ask the questions about the place. That’s all you have to know.”
Surikov replied, “I have to think this over.”
“You’ve been doing that since the first day you contacted me a year ago.”
“Yes? You know my mind and my soul? You’re not even Russian.”
“Neither are you, General. You’re a Muscovite, a Soviet man, and we’re both modern military men. We understand each other.”
“All right,” Surikov said decisively. “I have thought this through. I want to get out.”
“Then consider yourself out.” Hollis finally found a worm and threw the apple core to the sparrows. “Good luck and thanks.”
“I want to get out of here. Russia.”
Hollis knew what Surikov had meant. Sometimes, as with troublesome spouses, you had to begin negotiations by packing their bags for them.
“I want to spend my last days in the West,” Surikov said.
“Me too.”
Surikov didn’t respond.
“Do you think they’re on to you?” Hollis asked.
“No, but they will be if I give you what you want. I want to go to London.”
“Really? My wife’s in London. She didn’t like it here either.”
“How long will it take you to get me to the West?”
“It’s about a four-hour flight, General.” Hollis got a perverse pleasure in reminding Soviet officials of the kind of state they had created. He added, “You apply for a travel visa, and I’ll see to the Aeroflot reservation. One-way, correct?”
“You mean to tell me you can’t get people out of here?”
“It’s not real easy. You guys got a hell of a good police force.”
“Don’t think that if you keep me here, I will continue to feed you secrets, my friend. If you can’t get me out, I am retiring from your service.”
“I told you that was okay.”
“I am going to the British.”
Hollis wiped his hands on his napkin. Losing an agent who panicked and quit was one thing; losing him to another service was quite another. The new theory was to let a source leave anytime he wanted and not try to squeeze him as they’d done in the past. Squeezed agents inevitably got caught, and then the KGB found out everything he’d given away and took steps to fix things up. But if Surikov went to the Brits and got blown later, Hollis might never know that Surikov was singing in the Lubyanka.
“Or the French,” the general said. “I speak passable French. I could live in Paris.”
“If you go to the French, you might as well go right to the KGB and save time. They’re penetrated, General. Most of them hold secondary commissions in the KGB.”
“Don’t try to frighten me. The Germans are my third choice. So now the choice is yours.”
“Well, I’ll take it up with my people. It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s just that it’s dangerous. For you.” Actually, Hollis thought, it was more that they didn’t want to. Some politicians loved a high-ranking defector, but for intelligence people, a defecting spy told the KGB the same thing as a captured spy, namely that everything that had come across his desk was now in enemy hands. Surikov had either to go on spying for him or just retire and shut up. But since he seemed inclined to do neither, Hollis thought a car accident was what Surikov needed. Hollis, however, didn’t like that sort of thing and hoped he could think of something more creative. “We’ll think it over. You too. The West is not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Don’t joke with me, Colonel.” Surikov chain-lit his third or fourth cigarette.
Hollis took a Pravda from his briefcase. He read modern Russian fairly well — bureaucratic Russian, journalese, communist Russian. But he had difficulty with Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy, and the like, and he thought he’d enjoy working on that someday if he lived long enough to sit in a rocking chair with Tolstoy.