Hearing Tatiana speak, Boris abandoned his duties. “I’m sorry, sir, but we will kill you now,” he said, turning toward Gavallan. “Mr. Kirov, he insists. He says to tell you, it is business only.”
“You mean, ‘It’s only business,’” said Gavallan.
Boris shrugged. “My English is not so good as should be.”
Gavallan lifted his head. Watching the blond cock the hammer and level the barrel at his forehead, he felt like a spectator to his own death. He wasn’t frightened; he was too groggy for that, too fatigued by pain. He felt only disappointment, a terrible sense of letting Graf Byrnes down, of sentencing his company to an unknown fate, of allowing life to get the better of him.
“Ray? Ray, you home? What’s going on back there?”
The voice came from inside the house. Boris whispered something to Tanya and she moved toward Gavallan.
“Ray? That you?”
Gavallan opened his mouth to cry out, but at the same instant, Tatiana brought the butt of the gun crashing onto his head. The last thought to pass through his mind, even as he drifted into darkness, was that he knew the voice.
Cate.
What the hell are you doing here?
31
General Kirov, some mail.”
Major General Leonid Kirov glanced up from his work to see Levchenko, the department’s newest probationer, advancing across his office, a small parcel wrapped in brown wax paper in one hand.
“From Belgium,” Levchenko announced. He was whey-faced and chubby, more boy than man, and he was wearing the kind of sharp blue Italian suit that passed for a uniform these days among rising members of the service.
“Belgium, eh?” Kirov covered the timetables, bus schedules, and flight itineraries he had been studying, then stood and accepted the package. “What could it be, then? Chocolate? Some Flemish lace?”
He, too, was wearing a blue suit, but its boxy cut, worn serge, and frayed sleeves identified it as a trophy of Soviet tailoring. Still, the creases were razor-sharp and the jacket spotless and wrinkle-free, the result of habit, discipline, and his grandmother’s three-kilo iron.
Turning the package over, he checked the franking. The postmark revealed it to have been mailed from Amsterdam the first of May, six weeks earlier. Amsterdam was, of course, in Holland, not Belgium, but he didn’t feel like burdening Levchenko with the information. The caliber of probationers being what it was, Kirov supposed he should be grateful the fool hadn’t thought Amsterdam in Africa.
“Sign here, General.”
As Leonid Kirov scribbled his signature on the clipboard, he could not help but feel bitter and shortchanged. Twenty years earlier, the nation’s top graduates had clamored to join the KGB. To say one worked for the komitet gave one a prestige no amount of money could buy. No more. Enterprise, not espionage, had become the career of choice among tomorrow’s leaders. Money was what mattered. The crème de la crème of Moscow University and its brethren was not impressed by a starting salary of $150 a month. Waiters at the Marriott Grand Hotel on Tverskaya Ulitsa earned more.
A last look at the deliveries prompted a sigh of disgust. Only two other names were listed on the delivery sheet. One was his own, dated two weeks earlier, signifying receipt of a reconditioned toner cartridge he’d purchased with his own money. Handing back the clipboard, he grunted his thanks. “You may go.”
Levchenko gave a flaccid salute and exited the office, slamming the door behind him. Instead of firing off a rebuke, Kirov merely sighed with disgust. Very soon all this would change. Men like Levchenko would be shown the door. Fresh toner cartridges would be found in every laser printer. The Service would cast off its dusty veils and reclaim its proud birthright. And in his new mood of cautious optimism, Leonid Kirov decided the Service wasn’t dead. It was just sleeping.
With a few crisp strokes, he gathered the paperwork for his upcoming trip, slipped it into his briefcase, then tucked the briefcase under his desk. Then he patted his breast pocket. The plane ticket was there. Sunday, 11 A.M. Novastar Flight 44. Moscow to Perm. A top-secret trip to the Arctic Circle.
Only then did Kirov’s eyes return to the glossy brown parcel.
“Lapis,” he whispered. Finally!
Lapis was the work name of an agent he had inserted into Philips, the Dutch electronics behemoth, three years earlier. In early May, Lapis had called in a state of high excitement. He had managed to photograph documents relating to a new eavesdropping technology Philips was developing for the Dutch Intelligence Service. Within Philips, the project was graded “eyes only,” and its timely exploitation would allow his department to hack into the Dutch spy service’s mainframe and read its take as if it were their own. Six weeks later, the film had arrived. Kirov couldn’t help but shake his head. Gone were the days of the diplomatic pouch and emergency couriers. There was no cash in the budget for private jets or even economy-class tickets on KLM. As for commercial courier service, Federal Express had canceled its account two years back on grounds of nonpayment. These days, the Service sent and received its mail through the Russian post, like anyone else.
Six weeks!
A gentle shake of the package caused a small hard object to carom inside its folds. It was the film, no question. And despite his dismay, he felt a current of excitement rattle his bones. This was work, he told himself. This was the Service. Running an agent instead of worrying about copiers and toner cartridges.
Leonid Kirov had spent his entire career with the komitet. His postings had ranged from Brazil in the sixties to Hong Kong in the seventies, and finally to Washington, D.C., in the last tumultuous years of the regime. His specialty, then as now, was industrial espionage, and in his position as chief of FAPSI he oversaw all espionage measures implemented to advance the country’s scientific and technological capabilities.
Outside, a warm sun shone down on the white birch forest that surrounded the office complex. Kirov had always enjoyed the view, finding calm and serenity in the leafy environs. Unfortunately, he could no longer see many of the trees. Dirt an inch thick coated the windows. The window washers had left with Gorbachev. Closing the blinds, he stretched on tiptoes to turn on the electric fan. He would have preferred to open the window, but that was not an option. The “empire at Yasenevo,” as some of the intelligence service’s detractors called the twin office blocks situated on the outskirts of Moscow, had been constructed in the late 1970s, a prefabricated concrete jigsaw puzzle once a marvel of the Brezhnev era. Soon after its completion, the foundation had mysteriously settled, leaving Kirov’s tower “whiff skew,” warping the steel superstructure and rendering the windows impossible to open.
Kirov benignly dismissed the shortcomings. He would gladly trade the second-rate power unable to pay its own postage for the fiercesome Soviet State responsible for the frozen windows.
Opening the top drawer, he rummaged for a letter opener. The sound of the tape’s being ripped off the wax paper was like a scream in an abandoned church. He upended the package, and a neat black cartridge tumbled onto his desk. Pinching the cartridge between his fingers, he read the ASA number, and below it, written in Lapis’s neat script, the actual film speed used in taking the photographs. He scribbled both figures on the corner of the newspaper. Post-its, notepads, and unruled paper were rationed commodities. A moment later he was out of his office, attacking the hallway with the no-nonsense gait of a man half his age.