14.
Changes
PASSAGE through the Kattegat is a tricky affair for a submarine, doubly so when it is necessary to be covert. The water is shallow there, too shallow to run submerged. The channels can be tricky in daylight. They are worse at night, and worse still without a pilot. Since Dallas’ passage was supposedly a secret one, a pilot was out of the question.
Mancuso rode the bridge. Below, his navigator sweated at the chart table while a chief quartermaster manned the periscope and called out bearings to various landmarks. They couldn’t even use radar to help with navigation, but the periscope had a low-light amplifier, which didn’t quite turn night to day, but at least made the starless darkness look like twilight. The weather was a gift, with low clouds and sleet that restricted visibility just enough that the low, dark shape of the 688-class submarine would be difficult to spot from land. The Danish Navy knew of the submarine’s transit, and had a few small craft out to ward off any possible snoopers—there were none—but aside from that, Dallas was on her own.
“Ship on the port bow,” a lookout called.
“I got him,” Mancuso answered at once. He held a pistol-like light-amplifying scope and saw the medium-sized container ship. The odds, he thought, made it an East Bloc vessel. Within a minute, the course and speed of the inbound ship were plotted, with a CPA—Closest Point of Approach—of seven hundred yards. The Captain swore and gave his orders.
Dallas had her running lights on—the Danes had insisted on it. The rotating amber one above the masthead light marked her positively as a submarine. Aft, a seaman struck down the American flag and replaced it with a Danish one.
“Everybody look Scandinavian,” Mancuso noted wryly.
“Ja-ja, Kept’n,” a junior officer chuckled in the darkness. It would be hard for him. He was black. “Slow bearing change on our friend. He isn’t altering course that I can tell, sir. Look—”
“Yeah, I see ’em.” Two of the Danish craft were racing forward to interpose themselves between the container ship and Dallas. Mancuso thought that would help. All cats are gray at night, and a submarine on the surface looks like ... a submarine on the surface, a black shape with a vertical sail.
“I think she’s Polish,” the Lieutenant observed. “Yeah, I got the funnel now. Maersk Line.”
The two ships closed at a rate of a half a mile per minute. Mancuso turned to watch, keeping his scope on the ship’s bridge. He saw no special activity. Well, it was three in the morning. The bridge crew had a tough navigating job to do, and probably their interest in his submarine was the same as his main interest in their merchantman—please don’t hit me, you idiot. It was over surprisingly fast, and then he was staring at her stern light. It occurred to Mancuso that having the lights on was probably a good idea. If they’d been blacked out and then spotted, greater notice might have been taken.
They were in the Baltic Sea proper an hour later, on a course of zero-six-five, using the deepest water they could find as Dallas picked her way east. Mancuso took the navigator into his stateroom and together they plotted the best approach to, and the safest place on, the Soviet coast. When they’d selected it, Mr. Clark joined them, and together the three discussed the delicate part of the mission.
In an ideal world, Vatutin thought wryly, they would take their worries to the Defense Minister, and he would cooperate fully with the KGB investigation. But the world was not ideal. In addition to the expected institutional rivalries, Yazov was in the pocket of the General Secretary and knew of the differences of opinion between Gerasimov and Narmonov. No, the Defense Minister would either take over the entire investigation through his own security arm, or use his political power to close the case entirely, lest KGB disgrace Yazov himself for having a traitor for an aide, and so endanger Narmonov.
If Narmonov fell, at best the Defense Minister would go back to being the Soviet Army’s chief of personnel; more likely, he’d be retired in quiet humiliation after the removal of his patron. Even if the General Secretary managed to survive the crisis, Yazov would be the sacrificial goat, just as Sokolov had been so recently. What choice did Yazov have?
The Defense Minister was also a man with a mission. Under the cover of the “restructuring” initiative of the General Secretary, Yazov hoped to use his knowledge of the officer corps to remake the Soviet Army—in the hope, supposedly, of professionalizing the entire military community. Narmonov said that he wanted to save the Soviet economy, but no less an authority than Alexandrov, the high priest of Marxism-Leninism, said that he was destroying the purity of the Party itself. Yazov wanted to rebuild the military from the ground up. It would also have the effect, Vatutin thought, of making the Army personally loyal to Narmonov.
That worried Vatutin. Historically, the Party had used the KGB to keep the military under control. After all, the military had all the guns, and if it ever awoke to its power and felt the loosening of Party control ... it was too painful a concept on which to dwell. An army loyal exclusively to the General Secretary rather than the Party itself was even more painful to Vatutin, since it would change the relationship the KGB had to Soviet society as a whole. There could then be no check on the General Secretary. With the military behind him, he could break KGB to his will and use it to “restructure” the entire Party. He would have the power of another Stalin.
How did I ever start along this line? Vatutin asked himself. I’m a counterintelligence officer, not a Party theorist. For all his life, Colonel Vatutin had never dwelt on the Big Issues of his country. He’d trusted his superiors to handle the major decisions and allow him to handle the small details. No longer. By being taken into Chairman Gerasimov’s confidence he was now inextricably allied with the man. It had happened so easily! Virtually overnight—you have to be noticed to get general’s stars, he thought with a sardonic smile. You always wanted to get noticed. So, Klementi Vladimirovich, you got yourself noticed all right. Now look where you are!
Right in the middle of a power play between the KGB Chairman and the General Secretary himself.
It was actually quite funny, he told himself. He knew it would be less so if Gerasimov miscalculated—but the crowning irony of all was that if the KGB Chairman fell, then the liberal influences already put in place by Narmonov would protect Vatutin, who was, after all, merely doing the job assigned him by his duly appointed superiors. He didn’t think that he’d be imprisoned, much less shot, as had once been the case. His advancement would be at an end. He’d find himself demoted, running the KGB regional office at Omsk, or the least pleasant opening they could find, never again to return to Moscow Center.
That wouldn’t be so bad, he thought. On the other hand, if Gerasimov succeeded ... head of “Two” perhaps? And that wouldn’t be very bad at all.
And you actually believed that you could advance your career without becoming “political.” But that was no longer an option. If he tried to get out, he’d be disgraced. Vatutin was trapped, and knew it. The only way out was to do his job to the best of his ability.
The revery ended as he turned back to his reports. Colonel Bondarenko was totally clean, he thought. His record had been examined and reexamined, and there was nothing to indicate that he was anything less than a patriot and an above-average officer. Filitov is the one, Vatutin thought. As insane as it seemed on the surface, this decorated hero was a traitor.
But how the hell do we prove that? How do we even investigate it properly without the cooperation of the Defense Minister? That was the other rub. If he failed in his investigation, then Gerasimov would not look kindly upon his career ; but the investigation was hindered by political constraints imposed by the Chairman. Vatutin remembered the time he’d almost been passed over for promotion to major and realized how unlucky he’d been when the promotion board had changed its mind.
Oddly, it did not occur to him that all his problems resulted from having a KGB Chairman with political ambition. Vatutin summoned his senior officers. They arrived in a few minutes.
“Progress on Filitov?” he asked.
“Our best people are shadowing him,” a middle-level officer answered. “Six of them round the clock. We’re rotating schedules so that he doesn’t see the same faces very often, if at all. We now have continuous television surveillance all around his apartment block, and half a dozen people check the tapes every night. We’ve stepped up coverage of suspected American and British spies, and of their diplomatic communities in general. We’re straining our manpower and risking counterdetection, but there’s no avoiding that. About the only new thing I have to report is that Filitov talks in his sleep occasionally—he’s talking to somebody named Romanov, it sounds like. The words are too distorted to understand, but I have a speech pathologist working on it, and we may get something. In any case, Filitov can’t fart without our knowing it. The only thing we can’t do is maintain continuous visual contact without getting our people in too close. Every day, turning a corner or entering a shop, he’s out of sight for five to fifteen seconds—long enough to make a brush-pass or a dead-drop. Nothing I can do about that unless you want us to risk alerting him.”
Vatutin nodded. Even the best surveillance had its limitations.
“Oh, there is one odd thing,” the Major said. “Just learned about it yesterday. About once a week or so, Filitov takes the burn-bag down to the incinerator chute himself. It’s so routine there that the man in the destruct room forgot to tell us until last evening. He’s a youngster, and came in himself to report it—after hours, and in civilian clothes. Bright boy. It turns out that Filitov looked after the installation of the system, years back. I checked the plans myself, nothing out of the way. Completely normal installation, just like what we have here. And that’s all. For all practical purposes the only unusual thing about the subject is that he ought to be retired by now.”
“What of the Altunin investigation?” Vatutin asked next.
Another officer opened his notebook. “We’ve no idea where he was before being killed. Perhaps he was hiding out alone somewhere, perhaps he was protected by friends whom we have been unable to identify. We’ve established no correlation between his death and the movement of foreigners. He was carrying nothing incriminating except some false papers that looked amateurishly done, but probably good enough for the outlying republics. If he was murdered by CIA, it was a remarkably complete job. No loose ends. None.”
“Your opinions?”
“The Altunin case is a dead end,” the Major answered. “There are still a half-dozen things that we have to check out, but none has the least promise of an important break.” He paused for a moment. “Comrade ...”
“Go on.”
“I believe this was a coincidence. I think Altunin was the victim of a simple murder, that he tried to get aboard the wrong railcar at the wrong time. I have no evidence to point to, but that is how it feels to me.”
Vatutin considered that. It took no small amount of moral courage for an officer of the Second Chief Directorate to say that he was not on a counterespionage case.
“How sure are you?”
“We’ll never be sure, Comrade Colonel, but if CIA had done the murder, would they not have disposed of the body—or, if they were trying to use his death to protect a highly placed spy, why not leave evidence to implicate him as a totally separate case? There were no false flags left behind, even though this would seem the place to do so.”
“Yes, we would have done that. A good point. Run down all your leads anyway.”
“Of course, Comrade Colonel. Four to six days, I think.”
“Anything else?” Vatutin asked. Heads shook negatively. “Very well, return to your sections, Comrades.”
She’d do it at the hockey game, Mary Pat Foley thought. CARDINAL would be there, alerted by a wrong-number telephone call from a pay phone. She’d make the pass herself. She had three film cassettes in her purse, and a simple handshake would do it. Her son played on this junior-league team, as did Filitov’s grand-nephew, and she went to every game. It would be unusual if she didn’t go, and the Russians depended on people to stick to their routines. She was being followed. She knew it. Evidently the Russians had stepped up surveillance, but the shadow she rated wasn’t all that good—or at least they were using the same one on her, and Mary Pat knew when she saw a face more than once in a day.
Mary Patricia Kaminskiy Foley had typically muddled American ancestry, though some aspects of it had been left off her passport documents. Her grandfather had been an equerry to the House of Romanov, had taught the Crown Prince Aleksey to ride—no small feat since the youngster was tragically stricken with hemophilia, and the utmost caution had needed to be exercised. That had been the crowning achievement of an otherwise undistinguished life. He’d been a failure as an Army officer, though friends at court had ensured his advancement to colonel. All that had accomplished was the utter destruction of his regiment in the Tannenberg Forests, and his capture by the Germans—and his survival past 1920. Upon learning that his wife had died in the revolutionary turmoil that followed the First World War, he’d never returned to Russia—he always called it Russia—and eventually drifted to the United States, where he’d settled in the suburbs of New York and remarried after establishing a small business. He’d lived to the ripe old age of ninety-seven, outliving even a second wife twenty years his junior, and Mary Pat never forgot his rambling stories. On entering college and majoring in history, she learned better, of course. She learned that the Romanovs were hopelessly inept, their court irredeemably corrupt. But one thing she’d never forget was the way her grandfather wept when he got to the part about how Aleksey, a brave, determined young man, and his entire family had been shot like dogs by the Bolsheviks. That one story, repeated to her a hundred times, gave Mary Pat a view of the Soviet Union which no amount of time or academic instruction or political realism could ever erase. Her feelings for the government which ruled her grandfather’s land were completely framed by the murder of Nicholas II, his wife, and his five children. Intellect, she told herself in reflective moments, had very little to do with the way people feel.
Working in Moscow, working against that same government, was the greatest thrill of her life. She liked it even more than her husband, whom she’d met while a student at Columbia. Ed had joined CIA because she had decided very early in life to join CIA. Her husband was good at it, Mary Pat knew, with brilliant instincts and administrative skills—but he lacked the passion she gave to the job. He also lacked the genes. She had learned the Russian language at her grandfather’s knee—the richer, more elegant Russian that the Soviets had debased into the current patois—but more importantly she understood the people in a way that no number of books could relate. She understood the racial sadness that permeates the Russian character, and the oxymoronic private openness, the total exposure of self and soul displayed only to the closest friends and denied by a Moscovite’s public demeanor. As a result of this talent, Mary Pat had recruited five well-placed agents, only one shy of the all-time record. In the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, she was occasionally known as Supergirl, a term she didn’t care for. After all, Mary Pat was the mother of two, with the stretchmarks to prove it. She smiled at herself in the mirror. You’ve done it all, kid. Her grandfather would be proud.
And the best part of all: nobody had the least suspicion of what she really was. She made a final adjustment in her clothing. Western women in Moscow were supposed to be more conscious of their dress than Western men. Hers were always just a touch overdone. The image she projected to the public was carefully conceived and exquisitely executed. Educated but shallow, pretty but superficial, a good mother but little more, quick with her Western display of emotions but not to be taken very seriously. Scurrying about as she did, substitute-teaching occasionally at the kids’ school, attending various social functions, and endlessly wandering about like a perpetual tourist, she fitted perfectly the preconceived Soviet notion of an American female bubblehead. One more smile in the mirror: If the bastards only knew.
Eddie was already waiting impatiently, his hockey stick jerking up and down at the drab carpet in the living room. Ed had the TV on. He kissed his wife goodbye, and told Eddie to kick ass—the senior Foley had been a Rangers fan before he learned to read.
It was a little sad, Mary Pat thought on the elevator. Eddie had made some real friends here, but it was a mistake to get too friendly with people in Moscow. You might forget that they were the enemy. She worried that Eddie was getting the same sort of indoctrination that she’d gotten, but from the wrong direction. Well, that was easily remedied, she told herself. In storage at home she had a photograph of the Czarevich Aleksey, autographed to his favorite teacher. All she really had to do was explain how he’d died.
The drive to the arena was the routine one, with Eddie getting ever more hyper as game time approached. He was tied as the league’s third leading scorer, only six points behind the lead center for the team they were playing tonight, and Eddie wanted to show Ivan Whoeverhewas that Americans could beat Russians at their own game.
It was surprising how crowded the parking lot was, but then it wasn’t a very large parking lot and ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted in the Soviet Union. This game would decide the playoff standings for the league championship, and quite a few people had come to see it. That was fine with Mary Pat. She’d barely set the parking brake when Eddie tore open the door, lifted his dufflebag, and waited impatiently for his mother to lock the car. He managed to walk slowly enough for his mother to keep up, then raced into the locker room as she went up to the rink.
Her place was predetermined, of course. Though reluctant to be overly close to foreigners in public, at a hockey game the rules were different. A few parents greeted her, and she waved back, her smile just a little too broad. She checked her watch.
“I haven’t seen a junior-league game in two years,” Yazov said as they got out of the staff car.
“I don’t go much either, but my sister-in-law said that this one is important, and little Misha demanded my presence.” Filitov grinned. “They think I am good luck—perhaps you will be too, Comrade Marshal.”
“It is good to do something a little different,” Yazov conceded with mock gravity. “The damned office will still be there tomorrow. I played this game as a boy, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. Were you any good?”
“I was a defenseman, and the other children complained that I checked too hard.” The Defense Minister chuckled, then waved for his security people to go ahead.
“We never had a rink out where I grew up—and the truth is I was too clumsy as a child. Tanks were perfect for me—you’re expected to destroy things with them.” Misha laughed.
“So how good is this team?”
“I like the junior league better than the real ones,” Colonel Filitov answered. “More—more exuberant. I suppose I just like to see children having a good time.”
“Indeed.”
There weren’t many seats around the rink—and besides, what real hockey fan wanted to sit? Colonel Filitov and Marshal Yazov found a convenient place near some of the parents. Their Soviet Army greatcoats and glistening shoulder boards guaranteed them both a good view and breathing space. The four security people hovered about, trying not to look too obviously at the game. They were not terribly concerned, since the trip to the game had been a spur-of-the-moment decision on the Minister’s part.
The game was an exciting one from the first moment. The center for the other team’s first line moved like a weasel, handling the puck with skillful passes and adroit skating. The home team—the one with the American and Misha’s grand-nephew—was pressed back into its own zone for most of the first period, but little Misha was an aggressive defenseman, and the American boy stole a pass, taking it the length of the rink only to be foiled by a dazzling save that evoked cheers of admiration from supporters of both sides. Though as contentious a people as any on earth, the Russians have always been imbued with generous sportsmanship. The first period ended zero-zero.
“Too bad,” Misha observed while people hustled off to the rest rooms.
“That was a beautiful breakaway, but the save was marvelous,” Yazov said. “I’ll have to get them this child’s name for Central Army. Misha, thanks for inviting me to this. I’d forgotten how exciting a school game could be.”
“What do you suppose they’re talking about?” the senior KGB officer asked. He and two other men were up in the rafters, hidden by the lights that illuminated the rink.
“Maybe they’re just hockey fans,” the man with the camera replied. “Shit, it sounds like quite a game we’re missing. Look at those security guards—fucking idiots are watching the ice. If I wanted to kill Yazov ...”
“Not a terribly bad idea, I hear,” observed the third man. “The Chairman—”
“That is not our concern,” the senior man snapped, ending the conversation.
“Come on, Eddieeee!” Mary Pat screamed as the second period began. Her son looked up in embarrassment. His mom always got too excited at these things, he thought.
“Who was that?” Misha asked, five meters away.
“Over there, the skinny one—we met her, remember?” Yazov said.
“Well, she’s a fan,” Filitov noted as he watched the action swing to the other end. Please, Comrade Minister, you do it ... He got his wish.
“Let’s go over and say hello.” The crowd parted before them, and Yazov sidled up on her left.
“Mrs. Foley, I believe?”
He got a quick turn and a quicker smile before she turned back to the action. “Hello, General—”
“Actually, my rank is Marshal. Your son is number twelve?”
“Yes, and did you see how the goalie robbed him!”
“It was a fine save,” Yazov said.
“Then let him do it to somebody else!” she said as the other team started moving into Eddie’s end.
“Are all American fans like you?” Misha asked.
She turned again, and her voice showed a little embarrassment. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? Parents are supposed to act—”
“Like parents?” Yazov laughed.
“I’m turning into a little-league mom,” Mary Pat admitted. Then she had to explain what that was.
“It is enough that we’ve taught your son to be a proper hockey wingman.”
“Yes, perhaps he’ll be on the Olympic team in a few years,” she replied with a wicked, though playful smile. Yazov laughed. That surprised her. Yazov was supposed to be a tight, serious son of a bitch.
“Who’s the woman?”
“American. Her husband’s the press attaché. Her son’s on this team. We have a file on both of them. Nothing special.”
“Pretty enough. I didn’t know Yazov was a lady’s man.”
“Do you suppose he wants to recruit her?” the photographer suggested, snapping away.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
The game had unexpectedly settled down into a defense struggle that hovered around center ice. The children lacked the finesse necessary for the precise passing that marked Soviet hockey, and both teams were coached not to play an overly physical game. Even with their protective equipment, they were still children whose growing bones didn’t need abuse. That was a lesson the Russians could teach Americans, Mary Pat thought. Russians had always been highly protective of their young. Life for adults was difficult enough that they always tried to shield their children from it.
Finally, in the third period, things broke loose. A shot on goal was stopped, and the puck rebounded out from the goalie. The center took it and turned, racing directly for the opposite goal, with Eddie twenty feet to his right. The center passed an instant before being poke-checked, and Eddie swept around to the corner, unable to take a shot at the goal and blocked from approaching it himself by a charging defenseman.
“Center it!” his mother screamed. He didn’t hear her, but didn’t need to. The center was now in place, and Eddie fired the puck to him. The youthful center stopped it with his skate, stepped back, and sent a blazing shot between the legs of the opposing goalie. The light behind the cage flashed, and sticks went soaring into the air.
“Fine centering pass,” Yazov noted with genuine admiration. He continued on in a chiding tone. “You realize that your son now possesses State secrets, and we cannot allow him to leave the country.”
Mary Pat’s eyes widened in momentary alarm, persuading Yazov that she was indeed a typical bubbleheaded Western female, though she was probably quite a handful in bed. Too bad that I’ll never find out.
“You’re joking?” she asked quietly. Both the soldiers broke out into laughter.
“The Comrade Minister is most certainly joking,” Misha said after a moment.
“I thought so!” she said rather unconvincingly before she turned back to the game. “Okay, let’s get another one!”
Heads turned briefly, mainly in amusement. Having this American at the game was always good for a laugh. Russians find the exuberance of Americans immensely entertaining.
“Well, if she’s a spy, I’ll eat this camera.”
“Think on what you just said, Comrade,” the officer in charge whispered. The amusement in his voice died in an instant. Think on what he just said, the man told himself. Her husband, Edward Foley, is regarded by the American press as a dolt, not smart enough to be a proper reporter, certainly not good enough to be on the staff of the New York Times. The problem was, while that was the sort of cover that every real intelligence officer dreamed of, it was one naturally shared by all the government-service dolts serving every nation in the world. He himself knew that his cousin was a cretin, and he worked for the Foreign Ministry.
“Are you sure you have enough film?”
Eddie got his chance with forty seconds left. A defenseman fanned on a shot from the point, and the puck skittered back to center ice. The center flipped it to the right as the flow of the game changed. The other team had been on the verge of pulling its goalie, and the youngster was out of position when Eddie took the pass and streaked in from his left. Edward Foley II turned sharply and fired behind the goalie’s back. The puck clanged on the post, but fell right on the goal line and dribbled across.
“Score!” Mary Pat howled, jumping up and down like a cheerleader. She threw her arms around Yazov, much to the consternation of his security guards. The Defense Minister’s amusement was tempered by the realization that he’d have to write up a contact report on this tomorrow. Well, he had Misha as a witness that they’d discussed nothing untoward. She grabbed Filitov next.
“I told you you were good luck!”
“My God, are all American hockey fans like this?” Misha asked, disengaging himself. Her hand had touched his for a half-imaginary fraction of a second, and the three film cassettes were inside the glove. He felt them there and was amazed that it had been done so skillfully. Was she a professional magician?
“Why are you Russians so grim all the time—don’t you know how to have a good time?”
“Maybe we should have more Americans around,” Yazov conceded. Hell, I wish my wife were as lively as this one! “You have a fine son, and if he plays against us in the Olympics, I will forgive him.” He was rewarded with a beaming smile.
“That’s such a nice thing to say.” I hope he kicks your commie asses all the way back to Moskva. If there was anything she couldn’t stand, it was being patronized. “Eddie got two more points tonight, and that Ivan Somebody didn’t get any!”
“Are you really that competitive, even with children’s games?” Yazov asked.
Mary Pat slipped, just a little, so fast that her brain couldn’t keep up with the automatic reply: “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” She paused, then covered the mistake. “Vince Lombardi, a famous American coach, said that. Excuse me, you must think me nekulturny. You’re right, this is just a game for children.” She smiled broadly. In your face!
“Did you see anything?”
“A foolish woman who gets overly excited,” the photographer replied.
“How quickly will you have the film developed?”
“Two hours.”
“Get moving,” the senior man said.
“Did you see anything?” the remaining officer asked his boss.
“No, I don’t think so. We’ve watched her for nearly two hours, and she acts like a typical American parent who gets too worked up at an athletic match, but just happens to attract the attention of the Defense Minister and the main suspect of a treason case. I think that’s enough, Comrade, don’t you?” What a grand game this is ...
Two hours later, over a thousand black-and-white photographs were laid on the officer’s desk. The camera was a Japanese one that put a time reference on the lower edge, and the KGB photographer was as good as any newspaper professional. He’d shot almost continuously, stopping only long enough to replace the oversized film magazines on the autodriven camera. At first he’d wished to use a portable TV camera, but the photographer had talked him out of it. The resolution wasn’t as good, nor was the speed. A still camera was still the best for catching something quick and small, though you couldn’t read lips from its record as you could with a videotape.
Each frame required a few seconds as the officer used a magnifying glass to examine the subjects of his interest. When Mrs. Foley entered the sequence of photos, he needed a few more seconds. He examined her clothing and jewelry at some length, and her face. Her smile was particularly mindless, like something in a Western television commercial, and he remembered hearing her screams over the crowd. Why were Americans so damned noisy?
Good dresser, though, he admitted to himself. Like most American women in a Moscow scene, she stood out like a pheasant in a barnyard—he snorted annoyance at the thought. So what that the Americans spend more money on clothing? What did clothing matter to anyone? Through my binoculars, she looked like she had the brains of a bird ... but not in these photos—why?
It was the eyes, he thought. In the still photos her eyes sparkled with something different from what he’d watched in person. Why was that?
In the photographs, her eyes—they were blue, he remembered—were always focused on something. The face, he noticed, had vaguely Slavic cheekbones. He knew that Foley was an Irish name, and assumed that her ancestry was Irish, too. That America was a country of immigrants, and that immigrants cross ethnic lines in marriage, were foreign concepts to the Russians. Add a few kilograms, change her hair and clothing, and she could be any face encountered on a street in Moscow ... or Leningrad. The latter was more likely, he thought. She looked more like a Leningrader. Her face proclaimed the slight arrogance affected by people from that city. I wonder what her ancestry really is.
He kept flipping through the photos, and remembered that the Foleys had never been given this sort of scrutiny. The file on both was a relatively thin one. They were regarded by “Two” as nonentities. Something told him that this was a mistake, but the voice in the back of his head wasn’t yet loud enough. He approached the last of the photographs, checking his watch. Three in the damned morning! he grumbled to himself and reached for another cup of tea.
Well, that must have been the second score. She was jumping like a gazelle. Nice legs, he saw for the first time. As his colleagues had noted up in the rafters, she was probably very entertaining in bed. Only a few more frames till the end of the game and ... yes, there she was, embracing Yazov—that randy old goat!—then hugging Colonel Filitov—
He stopped dead. The photograph caught something that he hadn’t seen through the binoculars. While giving Filitov a hug, her eyes were locked on one of the four security guards, the only one not watching the game. Her hand, her left hand, was not wrapped around Filitov at all, but rather down by his right one, hidden from view. He flipped back a few frames. Right before the embraces her hand had been in her coat pocket. Around the Defense Minister, it was balled into a fist. After Filitov, it was open again, and still her eyes were on the security guard, a smile on her face that was very Russian indeed, one that stopped at the lips—but in the next frame, she was back to her normal, flighty self. In that moment he was sure.
“Son of a bitch,” he whispered to himself.
How long have the Foleys been here? He searched his weary memory but couldn’t dredge it up. Over two years at least—and we didn’t know, we didn’t even suspect ... what if it’s only her? That was a thought—what if she were a spy and her husband were not? He rejected the idea out of hand, and was correct, but for the wrong reason. He reached for the phone and called Vatutin’s home.
“Yes,” the voice answered after only half a ring.
“I have something of interest,” the officer said simply.
“Send a car.”
Vatutin was there twenty-five minutes later, unshaven and irritable. The Major merely set out the crucial series of photographs.
“We never suspected her,” he said while the Colonel examined the pictures through a magnifying glass.
“A fine disguise,” Vatutin observed sourly. He’d been asleep only for an hour when the phone rang. He was still learning how to sleep without a few stiff drinks beforehand—trying to learn, he corrected himself. The Colonel looked up.
“Can you believe it? Right in front of the Defense Minister and four security guards! The balls of this woman! Who’s her regular shadow?”
The Major merely handed over the file. Vatutin leafed through it and found the proper sheet.
“That old fart! He couldn’t follow a child to school without being arrested as a pervert. Look at this—a lieutenant for twenty-three years!”
“There are seven hundred Americans attached to the embassy, Comrade Colonel,” the Major observed. “We have only so many really good officers—”
“All watching the wrong people.” Vatutin walked to the window. “No more! Her husband, too,” he added.
“That will be my recommendation, Comrade Colonel. It would seem likely that they both work for CIA.”
“She passed something to him.”
“Probably—a message, perhaps something else.”
Vatutin sat down and rubbed his eyes. “Good work, Comrade Major.”
It was already dawn at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The Archer was preparing to return to his war. His men had packed their new weapons while their leader—now that was a new thought, the Archer told himself—reviewed his plans for the coming weeks. Among the things he’d received from Ortiz was a complete set of tactical maps. These were made from satellite photographs, and were updated to show current Soviet strongpoints and areas of heavy patrol activity. He had a long-range radio now on which he could tune to weather forecasts—including Russian ones. Their journey wouldn’t start until nightfall.
He looked around. Some of his men had sent their families to this place of safety. The refugee camp was crowded and noisy, but a far happier place than the deserted villages and towns bombed flat by the Russians. There were children here, the Archer saw, and children were happy anywhere they had their parents, and food, and friends. The boys were already playing with toy guns—and with the older ones, they were not toys. He accepted that with a degree of regret that diminished on every trip. The losses among the mudjaheddin demanded replacements, and the youngest were the bravest. If freedom required their deaths—well, their deaths came in a holy cause and Allah was beneficent to those who died for Him. The world was indeed a sad place, but at least here a man could find a time for amusement and rest. He watched one of his riflemen helping his firstborn son to walk. The baby could not do it alone, but with each tottering step he looked up at the smiling, bearded face of a father he’d seen only twice since birth. The new chief of the band remembered doing the same for his son ... now being taught to walk a very different path ...
The Archer returned to his own work. He couldn’t be a missileer anymore, but he’d trained Abdul well. Now the Archer would lead his men. It was a right that he’d earned, and, better still, his men thought him lucky. It would be good for morale. Though he had never in his life read books on military theory, the Archer felt that he knew their lessons well enough.
There was no warning—none at all. The Archer’s head snapped around as he heard the crackling sound of exploding cannon shells, then he saw the dart-shapes of the Fencers, barely a hundred meters high. He hadn’t yet reached for his rifle when he watched the bombs falling free of the ejector racks. The black shapes wobbled slightly before the fins stabilized them, their noses tipping down in slow motion. The engine noise of the Soviet Su-24 attack-bombers came next, and he turned to follow them as his rifle came up to his shoulder, but they were too fast. There was nothing left to do but dive to the ground, and it seemed that everything was happening very, very slowly. He was almost hovering in the air, the earth reluctant to come to meet him. His back was turned to the bombs, but he knew they were there, heading down. His eyes snapped up to see people running, his rifleman trying to cover the infant son with his body. The Archer turned to look up and was horrified to see that one bomb seemed to come straight at him, a black circle against the clear morning sky. There was no time even to say Allah’s name as it passed over his head, and the earth shook.
He was stunned and deafened by the blast, and felt wobbly when he stood. It seemed strange to see and feel noise, but not to hear it. Instinct alone flipped the safety off his rifle as he looked around for the next plane. There it was! The rifle came up and fired of its own accord, but made no difference. The next Fencer dropped its load a hundred meters farther on and raced away before a trail of black smoke. There were no more.
The sounds came back slowly, and seemed distant, like the noises of a dream. But this was no dream. The place where his man and the baby had been was now a hole in the ground. There was no trace of the freedom fighter or his son, and even the certainty that both now stood righteously before their God could not mask the blood-chilling rage that coursed through his body. He remembered showing mercy to the Russian, feeling some regret at his death. No more. He’d never show mercy to an infidel again. His hands were chalk-white around the rifle.
Too late, a Pakistani F-16 fighter streaked across the sky, but the Russians were already across the border, and a minute later, the F-16 circled over the camp twice before heading back to its base.
“Are you all right?” It was Ortiz. His face had been cut by something or other, and his voice was far away.
There was no verbal answer. The Archer gestured with his rifle as he watched a newly made widow scream for her family. Together the two men looked for wounded who might be saved. Luckily, the medical section of the camp was unhurt. The Archer and the CIA officer carried a half-dozen people there, to see a French doctor cursing with the fluency of a man accustomed to such things, his hands already bloody from his work.
They found Abdul on their next trip. The young man had a Stinger up and armed. He wept as he confessed that he’d been asleep. The Archer patted his shoulder and said it wasn’t his fault. There was supposed to be an agreement between the Soviets and the Pakistanis that prohibited cross-border raids. So much for agreements. A television news crew—French—appeared, and Ortiz took the Archer to a place where neither could be seen.
“Six,” the Archer said. He didn’t mention the noncombatant casualties.
“It is a sign of weakness that they do this, my friend,” Ortiz replied.
“To attack a place of women and children is an abomination before God!”
“Have you lost any supplies?” To the Russians this was a guerrilla camp, of course, but Ortiz didn’t bother voicing their view of things. He’d been here too long to be objective about such matters.
“Only a few rifles. The rest is outside the camp already.”
Ortiz had no more to say. He’d run out of comforting observations. His nightmare was that his operation to support the Afghans was having the same effect as earlier attempts to aid the Hmong people of Laos. They’d fought bravely against their Vietnamese enemies, only to be virtually exterminated despite all their Western assistance. The CIA officer told himself that this situation was different, and, objectively, he thought that this was true. But it tore at what was left of his soul to watch these people leave the camp, armed to the teeth, and then to count the number that returned. Was America really helping the Afghans to redeem their own land, or were we merely encouraging them to kill as many Russians as possible before they, too, were wiped out?
What is the right policy? he asked himself. Ortiz admitted that he didn’t know.
Nor did he know that the Archer had just made a policy decision of his own. The old-young face turned west, then north, and told himself that Allah’s will was no more restricted by borders than was the will of His enemies.