"So he'll leave it," said Zemyatin.
" 'So he'll leave it,' " mimicked the bodyguard. "So I'll clean it up." He shuffled back from the bare table with the linoleum place mats into the kitchen.
"Ivan," said Zemyatin. "The reason I say we must assume that every enemy is perfect is that I am sure no one is perfect. All that has happened is that you have not found the American's flaw yet. So where, we must ask ourselves, have we been looking? This is crucial in our thinking-"
The bodyguard came back into the living room, brushing his shoulder into the conversation.
"Here is your cup. Here is your saucer," said the bodyguard. He banged the saucer down on the table.
"Thank you," said Zemyatin. "Now, Ivan, the world situation is this-"
"The glass on the saucer doesn't even have tea in it, but the pretty boychik has got himself a saucer. You want two saucers for the tea you don't have?"
"Give him tea," said Zemyatin.
"I am not sure about the tea," said General Ivanovich. "I would like to get on with this. We are dealing with a strange new element-"
"Take the tea," said Zemyatin.
"Tea," said General Ivanovich.
"He doesn't want tea. You made him take tea."
"I'll have the tea," said General Ivanovich. His bright, perfectly green uniform stood out like a shiny button in a rag factory compared to the old bathrobe Zemyatin wore, and the floppy trousers with the old lug of a pistol stuck in them that the bodyguard wore.
"Just because he tells you do to something, you don't have to do it. He pushed Russia around. Don't let him push you around."
"He is my commander," said General Ivanovich,
"Bully, bully, bully. We all get bullied by Alexei. Alexei the bully."
By the time the bodyguard got back with the steaming tea, Zemyatin had outlined the situation with brilliant simplicity. Unfortunately, the bodyguard wouldn't leave until General Ivanovich took at least one sip of the tea. It burned his tongue.
"He's not a Russian, Alexei," said the bodyguard, "He didn't put a sugar cube in his mouth."
"He's a new Russian."
"None of us are that new. He doesn't want the tea. Look."
"Would you mind if we defended Mother Russia in the midst of your dinner?" said Alexei.
"Every time you want needless saucers, we have got a national emergency," said the bodyguard.
"You are probably wondering why I keep him," said Zemyatin.
"No," said ivanovich, who was even now learning to think like the Great One. "Obviously he does the necessary things very well. You can within a doubt trust him to do certain things. In brief, sir, he does work."
"Good. Now, this killer they have. We don't know his flaw yet. All right. Good. Let's put that aside for just a moment. I don't care whether we kill him or not. A few men here or there does not matter."
"There is something else," Zemyatin continued. "The Americans have a weapon we are interested in."
"Would you identify it for me?"
"No," said Zemyatin. "But they were testing it in London, when this man appeared on the scene to snatch away our one lead to it. This extraordinary man. This man whom we don't know how to kill yet. Then he turns up in a South American country. Then he turns up in Hanoi. Why?"
General Ivanovich knew from the way the older man spoke that he was not supposed to answer this. "Because, as we gather from reports now coming in, he is looking for the same weapon."
"Is it possible they don't have the weapon? Maybe the British have the weapon."
"Logical, but we know everything the British have. We know all their layers of counterintelligence. Now I have told you more than I wanted about other departments. No matter. We must ask ourselves, why are they committing this weapon? As a deception?"
"If it were anyone other than the one I have seen," said Ivanovich, "I would say snatch him and get the information from him."
"What we are seeing on almost every level is an America far more cunning than we ever thought possible. Could I have misjudged, and is there another explanation for all this? I ask because we are approaching a point from where there is no return. A major decision awaits. It will be like a bullet that cannot be recalled. The world will never be the same. Our world. Their world. Never the same."
General Ivanovich thought a moment. "I'll tell you, sir, that before those pictures, before seeing what I have seen both through my own eyes and through the eyes of experts, I would have said yes, you are misjudging the Americans. I had never seen anything the Americans had done, outside of electronics, that would justify our respect."
"And now?"
"And now I know of a man ... a killing machine whose chin can dislodge the neck vertebrae of another human being. We have tried to put him down twice. And he appears twice. Is he new? Did he come just this month from nowhere? No. He has been around."
"Right," said Zemyatin. "But strangely, they are sending him after this thing we believe they have."
"If they are still looking for it, do they have it?" asked the general.
"Ah," said Zemyatin. "The Americans who never hid things that well before would ordinarily not hide things that well now. But look at this killer they had hidden so well. Who does he work for? We don't know. So they are smarter than we think. What a great deception to make one think one does not have the weapon until it is used, or tested some more."
"The question is, Comrade Field Marshal, are the Americans that cunning?"
"An enemy is perfect until he shows you how to kill him. I never thought we would see the day when I am hearing about one human being who is perfect. There must be something we do not know."
Ivanovich had an idea. His desk had been bothered, of late most intensely, by offers of the North Korean allies to perform services in the international arena. Before devoting all his time to the field marshal, Ivanovich had handled these diplomatic requests himself. Now he had shunted them off to a subordinate.
"Our friends in Pyongyang want to provide a service. They say that we insult them by not making them full partners in the socialist struggle. They have had some success recently and of course have trumpeted it to us. Why not use them on this American?"
"Throwing another piece of dung," said Zemyatin. "What could they possibly have that we don't have? The random purposeless killing for which they have an appetite interests me not at all."
"They have succeeded in killing an SDEC director, a man we couldn't even locate. And now, as a gift of pride, they are going to give us the pope himself. No more meddling in our western Polish border. The pope. The SDEC director dead and the pope about to be dead."
"Let me tell you about the Koreans. There is a saying that when one brings a Korean to wield a knife, one hires not a servant but a master. It's true. Never trust a Korean assassin."
"I am not saying trust."
"This is something you might not know, boychik, but it is an ancient saying. The czars tasted the bitterness. One of the first things we did was to get their records. I was the one who made the decision to employ some of the czar's best policemen. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Mother Russia used special Koreans extensively. Do you know who got killed as often as a czar's enemy? The czar. There is a saying in this country that nothing comes out of Korea but your own death. No to Koreans. No. Never. I say it. The czars before us said it. And our grandchildren will say it."
General Ivanovich snapped to attention while sitting. His back became straight, his heels touched, his chin lifted to level, and Zemyatin knew the young man was afraid again. But the old field marshal had not said this to instill fear. It was something he had trusted over the years, an order he had given when the KGB first began using satellites. Use anyone but a Korean. The KGB had followed it blindly like good bureaucrats.