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With the early morning sun peeking above the horizon, Talanov and Zak walked slowly along Chemin du Littoral, eating their sandwiches. Cars sped past them in both directions, their exhaust eddies mixing with the sounds and smells of the waterfront. Stuffing the remainder of his Croque Monsieur into his mouth, Talanov looked at the wine bottle he had been carrying. “Do you believe in coincidence?” he asked.
“Sometimes,” answered Zak.
Talanov kept staring at the bottle. “They tried to kill me, Zak. I gave my life for what I thought we stood for, and this is how they repay me.”
“Remember Siberia? Did I not warn you about being too good at what you do?”
“Since when is that a sin?”
“It’s not a sin, but definitely a problem – for you, my friend – when you can’t be bought. In a corrupt system – and ours is a corrupt system – such actions place a target on your back. The question is, what do we do?”
“You may not want to know what I’m considering.”
“If you’re considering what I hope you’re considering, then the question isn’t whether or not I’m with you, but what took you so long.”
Talanov laughed before turning serious. “Heading down this path may get us killed.”
“Are you willing to take that risk?” asked Zak.
“I’ve been taking risks all these years for a lie. Maybe it’s time I started taking them for the truth. Because when a government forgets why it’s there – for the safety and prosperity of its people – then it’s time for that government to go. But the tyrants in Moscow won’t step aside willingly. It takes people like us working within the system to expose the lies . . . and help people like Gorev and his family escape. I want their deaths – especially Noya’s death – to amount to something. But, like I said, heading down this path may get us killed. Are you certain you want to commit to this?”
“What do we do first, Colonel?” asked Zak with a grin.
“We use Gorev’s defection to our advantage.”
“The defection failed, Alex, and so did we.”
“Not necessarily,” replied Talanov. “Everything hinges on how we sell this. In other words, we didn’t fail, we saved Moscow’s ass by stopping Sofia, the traitor, from selling the anthrax. We prevented news of Biopreparat from reaching the West. That is how we sell this, and then we use the protection our success gives us to begin leaking the truth.”
They cut left down a grassy embankment, across a feeder street, and up the opposite embankment toward a bridge that spanned several train tracks. The tracks were in an ugly corridor of brown rock, wires, rusting electrical poles, signs, and signal posts. A few items of trash were blowing like tumbleweeds. On the other side of the tracks was a retaining wall twenty feet high. Beyond the wall were some trees, and beyond these were some houses with red tile roofs.
They crossed the bridge and descended into a maze of curving narrow streets bordered by high walls. Behind the walls were shabby houses and unimaginative apartment blocks. Everything looked as if it had been shoved together in jumbled disarray to make room for more shabby houses and unimaginative apartment blocks. Stretching to the east was an undulating carpet of more shabbiness.
The street they were on was lined with garage doors, trash cans, and cars. Between two of the cars was a phone booth. It was not one of the pretty bright red ones found everywhere in London. This phone booth one was unpolished metal, with large glass windows and graffiti on the door. In a small panel near the top was the word, téléphone.
“Got any coins?” asked Talanov.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Black knife?”
Zak lifted the leg of his fatigues and slid his NR-40 out of its sheath. He handed it to Talanov, who used it to pry open the pay phone to expose its wires. Less than two minutes later, one thousand kilometers to the north, a telephone rang. The number was unlisted and was manned twenty-four hours by a rotating team of female CIA operations officers who each sounded like a sweet gray-haired little granny. Advanced software identified the incoming number, which was also recorded. If the caller did not present a current password or ask for the right individual, the caller would be told that he or she had reached a wrong number.
“Hello?” the on-duty granny answered in a shaky voice.
Talanov asked for La Tâche. The granny asked who was calling. Talanov identified himself simply as a friend.
“One moment,” Granny said, patching the call through to CIA Chief of Station, Bill Wilcox, who was having his morning coffee two miles away. When Wilcox answered, Granny told him an incoming call to their unlisted number had been made from a public phone box in Marseille. When Wilcox asked who it was, Granny said the caller had identified himself simply as a friend.
“I don’t take calls from anonymous people calling us out of the blue,” Wilcox said.
“He specifically asked for La Tâche. Obviously, someone referred him.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t say.”
Wilcox frowned. “Is the recorder on?”
“As we speak,” Granny replied.
Wilcox punched a button. “This is La Tâche,” he said.
Talanov started to mention Irene but didn’t. If Irene was a coded reference to Gorev’s defection or the Marbella safe house, then his use of the name could be traced specifically back to him through Agent Pilgrim. He liked Pilgrim and felt he could trust her, but until he knew for certain where this was all going, he was not about to reveal anything that could identify him by name should Donna have called ahead to say he might be calling. Instead he said, “You have a Collection Management Officer in your London embassy named Carl Ryan. Harvard graduate, five-nine, curly brown hair. He has a blonde wife named Monica who loves using his credit cards. The couple has a daughter on drugs at Harvard. That’s a quick summary, and here’s a little extra: Carl’s a Soviet agent. I know because I recruited him. Feel free to handle Carl the way we’ve been handling your agents for years, and that’s to feed him just what you want him to report.”
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong number.”
“If this is La Tâche, then I’ve got the right number. Look into my story about the daughter on drugs. She’s in a rehabilitation facility in upstate New York. It’s the reason Carl needs the cash. So far, we’ve paid him forty-five thousand dollars, with our next brown-bag drop happening next Tuesday morning, at 7:45, in that little café near the embassy. Carl enjoys a Banbury cake to go with his morning espresso. Like I said, look into it. One final point: I’m phoning because I want to help eradicate a disease. It’s the same disease you’ve been fighting since the end of World War II, and I am sick of being part of the problem. So from now on, with or without you, I’m committed to being part of the solution. I’ll phone you one more time, on Wednesday, to see if I’ve still got the wrong number.”
“No need. You’ve got my attention.”
“Look into it. I want more than just your attention.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“I’ll let you know on Wednesday.”
“Do you by chance know Irene?” asked Wilcox. Donna Pilgrim had phoned to tell him about a KGB colonel named Aleksandr Talanov, who may be calling. If this was Talanov, he could become a major asset.
“Am I supposed to?” asked Talanov in return.
“Not really. Just asking.”
“Then I’ll speak to you again on Wednesday.”
“Who is this? What’s your name?”
Talanov thought briefly about what had brought him to this point. Or, more specifically, who. Like the girl whose name he never knew so many years ago, Noya had changed his life. And he would forever be in her debt.
“Are you still there?” Wilcox asked.
Talanov refocused. “I’m here.”
“Your name?” asked Wilcox again.
“November Echo,” he said. “Call me November Echo.”
