GENERAL BORZOV REACHED FOR a fresh handkerchief from the stack on the upper right-hand corner of his desk. He brought it to his mouth and coughed into it. Then he opened it and looked at it. Disgusting. Truly. But he was under orders.
Borzov was not used to taking orders. This desk, this simple scarred piece of wood, had been the site of origin for some of the most important directives in the history of the Motherland. Borzov would never say such a thing himself, of course, but the trait that more than any other had made him who he was was his ability to accept facts. And the fact was, he was one of the most important men in the history of the Soviet Union, and therefore, of the world.
The fact that few people at home or abroad would ever know of his importance bothered him not at all. Borzov lived to serve his country as long as his country needed him.
And the time of the Motherland’s need of him had not yet passed. He had that from the Chairman’s own lips. Glasnost and Perestroika were all very good (in Borzov’s opinions, better than very good—superb as propaganda; tolerable as actual policies) but there would still be the need for the Menagerie Men.
Borzov smiled. It was his old ally-turned-adversary, the Congressman, who had coined that term, one cold night in 1943 in German-occupied Yugoslavia. Menagerie Men were war horses with the cunning of a fox, the courage of a lion, and the sting of a serpent. Borzov possessed all of those in full measure; until recently, he had also had the constitution of a bull. Now he was old. No—he had been old for a long time. Now he was old and infirm of body. That was the problem. That was what took getting used to.
And that was why he had submitted himself to the orders of someone other than the leader of the nation. To a mere colonel, a woman. Because Borzov had, of all things, a virus. It had kept him in bed for several days, until Comrade Colonel Doctor, who resembled an upright piano with a straight blond wig on top, had decided he would be more tranquil and recuperate better if she let him go back to work.
Tranquil. Borzov snorted just thinking of the word. He had a delicate mission under way, one that he had been preparing for the better part of two decades. It was vitally important. On the rare occasions Borzov allowed himself to daydream, it did not seem unreasonable to think of it as decisive. And it would all be decided in the fall, when the Americans chose their next President.
Once this operation could be successfully concluded, Borzov would be perfectly content to die. He would have left the Motherland in such a secure situation, that whatever young fool they chose to succeed him, said fool would be hard-pressed to ruin things.
So he did what the doctor told him, in order that he might live the required time. He made sure Madame Piano had the necessary information.
Such as the color of his phlegm.
General Borzov estimated that in person or through his subordinates, he had been responsible for the gathering of more information than any human being who had ever walked the earth. This information had been gathered through stealth and seduction and theft and extortion and assassination and torture, but none of that had ever been as distasteful to General Borzov as the constant monitoring of the color of his phlegm.
And now he had to cough again. Borzov took another handkerchief, coughed, looked. Grayish, he supposed. Yellowish-gray. Curse that doctor, anyway. What he ought to do was to parcel up the used handkerchiefs and send them to the doctor at the end of the day. Let her contemplate the color of his phlegm. He had more intriguing things to worry about.
Like the problem of who was killing the electronics experts. Indiscriminately. Some he had used, at least one the Congressman had used. Most of the dead men had never knowingly or unknowingly been involved in the operations of any government at all.
The Americans weren’t doing it. It didn’t feel like them at all, and Borzov’s great age was a testimonial to the wisdom of trusting his feelings. The GRU denied it was one of their operations. Borzov supposed he believed them. Though “Army Intelligence” was a contradiction in terms as far as Borzov was concerned, this indiscriminate killing seemed too much even for them.
Borzov sighed. It was ridiculous to let the GRU have such latitude. All it did was duplicate the KGB’s efforts, and frequently get in Borzov’s way. That was something to live for after the Atropos operation was done. He would (somehow) get around the Army’s objections and subsume the GRU into the KGB.
He laughed. It would only take another hundred years or so. The laugh turned into a cough. Borzov looked. Same color. He wondered how much phlegm he could produce for the doctor, should he live another hundred years. Enough to drown her in, he hoped.
In the meantime, he would try to puzzle out these killings. They didn’t have the earmarks of a professional operation. Neither did they seem to be the work of one of those quaint lunatic killers the capitalist system had a knack for turning out.
Someone was doing this for a reason, but what could the reason be? It couldn’t be to stop the men from taking or completing a given job. At least, that couldn’t be the reason for all of them, since some of the victims, including Gillick, one of the ones Borzov used to use, had been retired for some time.
Gillick, Borzov thought. He was, he supposed, just as glad to have Gillick dead, especially now, with Borzov’s masterpiece so near completion. Borzov might even have neutralized Gillick as a possible source of embarrassment himself, if it had occurred to him. So to one way of thinking, this killer had done Borzov a favor.
Borzov did not like to be grateful to unknowns for unasked favors. It bothered him. A spy master should know his allies as well as his enemies.
Borzov felt another cough coming on. He told himself he would suppress it for ten seconds. He began counting. At the count of seven, he cursed and reached madly for a handkerchief, bringing it to his mouth just in time.