The KGB ‘year’ runs from 1st July, and every spring the controllers of the Main Directorates meet the Chairman to prepare a work plan for the coming twelve months. This meeting, known as the Collegium, is a formal showpiece. All the real work is done beforehand and behind the scenes. Stanov had vainly been trying to improve the process for the last eight years.
‘Every time it is the same,’ he snapped. ‘What I need is hard intelligence: not wishful thinking, not obsequious flummery, not lies, but genuine intelligence. Yet you insist on trying to deceive me. Why?’
The six Deputy Chairmen of the KGB stared up the long table, their expressions varying from abashed to annoyed. The first annual planning session was always like this. It ran to a precise pattern. Stanov gave everyone a bollocking for rigging the statistics, then went meekly along to the Politburo and lied with the best of them. Everyone knew the KGB was inefficient. Nobody seriously believed that each year the number of recruits went up by 12.67 per cent, or that each year Counter-Intelligence arrested 14.74 per cent more foreign infiltrators than the year before. But it was necessary to give the Supreme Soviet delegates something to applaud before they dispersed to Georgia, and the Ukraine, and Byelorussia, and who knows where. It had always gone on like this. Why try to change it?
Michaelov leaned forward and opened his mouth to speak. As First Deputy Chairman he carried more clout than the rest of his colleagues.
‘You wish to speak, General?’
Michaelov froze with his mouth open, temporarily distracted by Stanov’s acerbic intervention.
‘Nothing suggests, comrade Marshal, that the statistics are any less reliable this year than last.’
‘I know that,’ yapped Stanov. ‘That’s what I mean!’
Michaelov sat back gloomily. The old man was at his unspeakable worst today. All the Deputy Chairmen had been working for months to try to get Stanov to sign Chairman’s Order Number 0078, an instrument which, if promulgated, would alter the delicate balance of power which subsisted between the KGB and the Administrative Organs Department of the Politburo. It was now or never, the ramifications of the affair ran deep, and Stanov, who knew perfectly well how important this Order was, still refused to sign it. The last thing anybody wanted was a row.
Stanov had other things on his mind. The fake defection on which so much depended was entering its final phase. Kyril was due to show his face on the streets of London this afternoon. It was hard to concentrate, knowing that if things went wrong the next meeting of the Collegium, for which the men round this table were supposed to be planning, would be his last.
The morning wore on. Stanov turned his attention from false statistics to the increasing number of ‘exceptional incidents’ which had occurred in the past year: drunkenness, unruly public behaviour, even rape. Concentration wavered. The Deputy Chairmen knew of these matters, just as they knew the complaints were important and reprehensible. They did not need to be reminded.
Coffee was served at 11.30, and with its arrival flasks were pulled from deep pockets. The meeting resumed in better humour after a 20-minute break, some progress was made. When the adjournment was announced at half-past one there was a general consensus that time had not been altogether wasted, although Chairman’s Order No. 0078 still remained unsigned.
Stanov returned to his office on the third floor to find Major Krubykov of the Kremlin Kommandant awaiting him. Stanov tensed. The Kremlin he could do without at present.
‘The First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union presents his compliments to comrade Marshal Voldemar Stanov, and asks him to attend the meeting of the Politburo which is now in progress.’
Stanov mechanically signalled Yevchenko to bring his overcoat. However courteously couched the language might be, it was unmistakably an order. Normally Stanov had a month’s warning of Politburo meetings which he would be expected to attend. This meant trouble.
‘Look after things, Yevchenko,’ he said, nodding his head to emphasise his true meaning. Yevchenko’s job this afternoon was to monitor Kyril, nothing else. But Major Krubykov had another, greater surprise for him.
‘Colonel Yevchenko is also requested to attend.’
For a second Stanov could not grasp the enormity of what was happening. Someone was at the back of it, an enemy. Someone who knew the importance of this afternoon to the Chairman of the KGB, a man with a motive for keeping his superiors out of the way while he dealt with a message from London.
Someone who could command the Kremlin? No, it was impossible. However high the traitor, he could not simply snap his fingers at the Politburo, say ‘Get rid of Stanov for the afternoon, will you?’ Stanov struggled to keep a foothold while the ice cracked and creaked around him. There had to be another explanation, something he had missed…
‘Major, it is necessary to make certain arrangements. Perhaps we could join you in the car?’
As the door closed behind Krubykov Stanov swung round to face Yevchenko. ‘Quick,’ he hissed, ‘ring up Sulitsky in the Seventh Directorate. Tell him I want an urgent “time and motion” on cipher traffic between Moscow and London. Don’t tell him what it’s for, just get him to fix it up by this afternoon.’
‘Hopeless. Everyone will know at once, you can’t keep that sort of check secret.’
‘I know, but it’s the best we can do. If they detain us – and oh, my friend, but they will detain us – we must have someone here to watch. What else can we do?’
Yevchenko discreetly watched his chief’s face from under thick eyebrows, reading distress and indecision. He was right. What else could they do at such short notice? He lifted the receiver and spoke into it urgently.
A black Zil was waiting in the courtyard to take them on the short journey to the Kremlin. Ensconced in its soft, luxurious interior Stanov spent the drive looking blankly out of the tinted window at the crowded streets. He was at a loss. Yevchenko never went with him to the Politburo. Who was interfering? They would have to try to cut the visit short, make some excuse and leave before three, when, allowing for the time difference, Kyril should be on the streets.
Krubykov rode in front with the driver. Yevchenko leaned across to Stanov and whispered in his ear.
‘Does anyone in the Politburo know it’s today Kyril is due in London?’
‘I’ve told nobody. Nobody!’
‘Nor I. Hold on to that. However much the traitor knows, he can’t know when and where Kyril is next going to surface. This has to be a coincidence, nothing more.’
Stanov pounded a gloved fist into the palm of his other hand.
‘It’s a conspiracy,’ he hissed. ‘You know what this is about as well as I do. They’re going to try and separate us. It’s come at last, Nikolai, the day we’ve always dreaded. Look out for yourself, that’s my advice.’
‘Well… here we go.’
‘Good luck!’
The car drew up in another courtyard and the two old men climbed out between saluting sentries. Inside the Kremlin it was warm. Officers came forward to relieve them of their overcoats and gloves. Stanov followed the well-trodden route, knowing that as they rounded the last corner the huge double-doors at the end of the corridor would be opened to permit them to enter without so much as breaking step.
But this did not happen. The doors remained firmly closed. Major Krubykov, who had never left their sides, was apologetic.
‘I was warned there might be a short delay. Forgive me for not mentioning it before, comrade Marshal. Please be seated.’
Yevchenko was looking around him curiously. He had never set foot in the Kremlin before. They were in a wide, parquet-floored corridor down the centre of which ran a strip of dark blue carpet. The colour scheme was easy on the eye: pale blue walls picked out in white rising to rococo ceilings embossed in gold leaf. Opposite the double doors leading to the Politburo’s chamber stood a bust of Lenin perched on top of a column which tapered downwards to the floor. It looked precarious. For the first time in his life Yevchenko felt he had something in common with the founder of modern Communism.
Time passed. Stanov paced up and down the corridor, muttering to himself and looking at his watch. Yevchenko shared his chief’s anxiety. If they did not get their business over with soon they would inevitably miss Kyril’s appearance in London.
Something else was troubling Stanov. With every minute that passed, the personal snub to him grew greater. Not even the Politburo had the right to keep the Chairman of the KGB and a Marshal of the Soviet Union waiting indefinitely. His thoughts became positively murderous. Didn’t they know what dirt he had on them, back at Dzerzhinsky Square? Didn’t they realise?
The double-doors opened. Stanov stopped in mid-stride and rounded furiously – only to find himself face to face with Kazin.
For a few seconds the two men looked each other up and down, neutral smiles on their faces. Whatever their personal history may have been, it was necessary to preserve a dignified public record. Behind Kazin the other members of the Politburo were dispersing in opposite directions down the long corridor, some of them darting curious glances at the two men, standing face to face, about whom so many strange stories were told.
‘Voldemar.’
‘Oleg.’
They held each other by the elbows, briefly, before separating. Stanov thought: no, you have not changed. A little balder, perhaps, the thick spectacles stronger than ever, but it is you, Oleg Kazin, still you. Still the same.
‘We must get together, sometime. Sometime soon.’
Deep in Stanov’s guts a rising spasm of anger caught him off guard, nearly gave the game away: I’ll see you in the last circle of Hell first…
Kazin stood back, fitting a cigarette into a little cane holder, a genial smile on his face. ‘He wants to talk to you, Voldemar. Alone.’ A slight twist of the shoulders and an eyebrow raised in the direction of the double-doors indicated that Kazin was referring to the First Secretary. ‘He doesn’t trust us, you see. For your ears only, eh?’ He laughed good-humouredly. ‘But I asked if I might borrow Colonel Yevchenko. Well, as I knew you were coming I thought it wouldn’t do any harm if I killed two birds with the same stone. There’s a sub-committee being formed…’
‘Comrade Marshal!’
Major Krubykov stood in the doorway, one hand raised in summons.
‘The First Secretary asks if you will take lunch with him.’
Stanov had time for one last furious glance at Yevchenko over his shoulder before Krubykov had ushered him through the double-doors and he saw no more.
Kazin turned back to Yevchenko to find the old colonel’s curious eyes full on his face. He smiled. Yevchenko’s expression did not change.
‘Colonel, I have been asked to chair a sub-committee of the Politburo. If we are to do our job properly we shall need a lot of very high-quality technical expertise, people close to the top in the KGB who know what really goes on there. Naturally, you were our first choice. I’m sure Marshal Stanov can spare you an afternoon each week, eh? Come, we’ll meet the other members of the committee, have some lunch maybe. And we can discuss this Chairman’s Order No. 0078 – the whole question of the KGB’s involvement with the Administrative Organs Department interests us tremendously.’ He put his arm round Yevchenko’s shoulders and began to walk down the corridor. ‘Those two will yak all day. I believe the First Secretary has a number of questions to raise in connection with Bucharensky’s famous diary.’ He paused in his stride, so that he could look Yevchenko in the face. ‘We have lots of time. In fact, we have all the time in the world.’
So it’s come, Yevchenko was thinking as he walked down the corridor, conscious of the deadweight of Kazin’s hand on his shoulder. It’s come at last. Decision time for me, old man.
But why, oh why, he was thinking as they turned the corner together, did it have to happen today?