THE NEXT DAY, TROTTER went to visit Grigori Illyich Bulanin, formerly of the KGB. Bulanin had defected to Trotter in person, in a Chamber of Horrors in London. He was one of the loose ends that had had to be tied up in the aftermath of the Russians’ first attempt at a Cronus operation.
Bulanin’s defection had been one of practicality, not of conviction. In a move to gather enough glory to propel him to the Politburo, he had gone far beyond his authority as “agricultural attaché,” and had mixed himself up in the kidnapping of a former top British Intelligence man. When it all fell apart on him, Bulanin had been wise enough to know that ambition should come a distant second to survival. He’d cast his lot with the Congressman and the Agency.
It was possible (though unlikely) that once out of his immediate peril, Bulanin might devote his time to gathering enough information to make himself valuable to Borzov once again.
To guard against this possibility, Bulanin was kept in a safe house. The Congressman chose safe houses for this kind of thing on two criteria: one, the safest house is the most inaccessible; two, the safest house was the one that could summon the most armed men to guard it.
Therefore, Trotter had not been surprised to learn that Bulanin was being kept in a cabin in the Maryland mountains, not far from Camp David. His father had offered to have him helicoptered out to it, but Trotter said he preferred to drive. He checked out a four-wheel-drive car, because it rained a lot in that part of the country at that time of year.
It was a small compound, and the guards were unobtrusive but definitely present. They were armed to the teeth under their plaid hunters’ coats. Trotter could see the lumps and bulges under the wool. They pulled Trotter over and took him into a small log cabin that turned out to be lined with tile and fluorescent lighting and contained communications and security equipment. They patted him down, found nothing, walked him through an X-ray machine, and finally pulled a set of fingerprints, which a computer compared and said were okay.
Trotter was glad to see a human being cross-check the results before they let him through—the computer was the weak link in the security. Someone who knew what he was doing could probably reprogram that thing to let in Pol Pot.
Then they took him in to see Bulanin, who was watching a tape of E.T. on a big-screen TV.
One of the men in the plaid jackets said, “Mr. Trotter to see you. Top clearance.” He and his companion withdrew, but not out of sight. Probably not out of earshot, either, but it didn’t make that much difference. Trotter had once worked with one of these guys during an assassination attempt, ex-Israeli army captain who had no curiosity whatever—he lived solely to contemplate the beauty of proper security procedure, and to go into action when someone tried to penetrate it. He told Trotter, “Shooting is my food,” and he was fairly typical of the breed.
Bulanin looked up at Trotter. A warm smile lit up the Russian’s movie-star-handsome face. “Welcome, welcome,” he said. “So you are Trotter now.”
“Names come and go,” Trotter told him.
“As do the men who bear them, no?”
“We’re still here,” Trotter said.
Bulanin laughed. Trotter had never seen him laugh before. He reached out and switched off the television and the tape player. “I’ve seen the film before,” he said. “A wonderful fantasy. Let us hope it never comes true.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if a visitor ever did come from another world and landed in one of our countries, the other would learn of it and immediately launch the missiles before the visitor could give the first secrets that would shift the balance of power. They would have to. Don’t you agree?”
It was too obvious even to acknowledge. If the kind of work Trotter did, and Bulanin had done, could be reduced to one commandment, it would be Think the Worst.
Trotter asked his question instead. “Who kills for Borzov?”
Bulanin looked at him in surprise, then laughed again. “Dozens. Hundreds. Russians. Bulgarians. Poles. East Germans. Arabs. Irish. Italians ... How many nations are there in the world? You may recall a certain countryman of yours named Leo Calvin.”
“This is different. This is an American, or someone who can pass for an American for a long time. He’s done four so far, maybe, with at least a month between each.”
“Maybe?”
“He makes them look like accidents,” Trotter said. “He’s very good.”
“So some of the deaths you’re wondering about might have indeed been accidents.”
“It’s possible.”
“He must be very good indeed if he has you, of all people, as worried as this.”
“I’ll admit I’m worried,” Trotter admitted. “He’s someone we never heard of.”
Bulanin nodded sagely. “Or you have heard of him, and you are asking me in order to check your information. Or this is just a fishing expedition, because it is always good to know if the enemy has come up with a new approach before you have thought of it.”
Trotter smiled. “Grigori Illyich, please don’t teach me interrogation techniques. It so happens that now I’m telling the truth.”
“What harm can there be? My life is a restricted one, if pleasant, and the only people I ever talk to are these robot guards or visitors handpicked by your father. He’s offered me a woman.”
“Big of him,” Trotter said. “You’re stalling, my friend. It makes me think you have something to tell me.”
Bulanin sighed. “You know, the only man I ever killed was Leo Calvin, whom I shot to keep him from shooting you.”
“And to keep yourself from being sent back to Moscow so Borzov could have a go at you.”
“There was that,” Bulanin conceded.
“Anyway,” Trotter went on, “how many deaths did you order? You lose points for ordering them, too, you know.”
“Then I am in trouble,” Bulanin said with a smile. “Not only did I order many, but most of them were carried out. Not all, though. I ordered your death three times in the space of two weeks, and look where it got me.”
“I am not the person to come to for sympathy,” Trotter told him. “Are we through wasting time?”
“I have no facts to give you,” Bulanin warned. “I can’t even dignify it as rumor. I spent most of my career in the West; Bonn, Washington, London. Perhaps if my work had kept me more in Moscow, I might know better—”
“You’re doing it again. If it’s not fact, and not rumor, what is it?”
“Legend.”
Trotter looked at him. To a spy, a legend was the network of false documentation that supported him (or her) on a clandestine mission.
Bulanin saw the question on Trotter’s face. “I don’t mean the word in the professional sense,” he said. “I mean a legend, like the Flying Dutchman. I don’t suppose anyone knows the truth of it but Borzov, but word filtered out.”
“Word filtered out,” Trotter echoed.
“It always does. You know as well as I that the largest risk in a security agency is not that your people will tell outsiders, but, like workers at a tire factory, will gather and talk shop. So word inevitably filters out.”
“I understand that. What I want you to tell me is, what did the word say?”
“Azrael,” Bulanin said.
“Azrael.” It irritated Trotter to be repeating the other man so often. “Sounds like a Borzov special.”
Bulanin looked surprised. “You are aware of the man’s idiosyncrasy, then?”
For the first time, Trotter really believed Bulanin would be content to spend the rest of his life in this cabin, or in similar lodgings arranged by the Congressman.
Because it was true. Borzov’s one weakness was his poetic streak. The man found it literally impossible to resist giving an operation an appropriate mythological name. Intercepted Russian communications with mythic connotations had already helped lead to an understanding of the workings of two operations. Vulcan, which was a plan to destroy a nuclear plant in France, and the fateful Cronus.
In five words, Trotter had made two unforgivable mistakes. He had revealed that the Agency had the means of learning the code names of Russian operations, and that they were aware of their significance.
And Bulanin had made his own mistake by showing he had spotted Trotter’s. If he ever left the Congressman’s custody now, it could only be by death. He couldn’t be allowed to have even a chance of taking or sending that information back to the Kremlin. Trotter would make sure everyone knew that, despite the fact that it would show him up to be the idiot he was. If he didn’t, the men who watched the wiretaps in this room would.
“Tell me about Azrael,” Trotter said.
“The legend, you mean.”
“Tell me the legend.”
“It’s the legend of the perfect assassin. Skilled, secret, fearless.”
“An American?”
“Apparently. A free-lance. He’d work for us, the Mafia, big business, anyone. No ideology at all.”
“And Borzov called him Azrael.”
“So says the legend,” Bulanin said quietly. “It might have been his own idea. That would explain why Borzov is so high on him. Like minds, you know.”
“Azrael was an angel, wasn’t he?”
“The Angel of Death,” Bulanin said. “I got curious once—a dangerous trait, but from time to time I succumb to it—and I looked it up.”
“The Angel of Death,” Trotter said, not realizing he was again parroting the Russian. He was remembering Hannah Stein, with her broken neck, lying in his hallway. With her hair wet. And he thought of the other deaths, the ones that had already happened and the ones to come.
Borzov, once again, had been on the money. Trotter was going to make it his business, though, to find out just how appropriate that name was.