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  Did those princes think in terms of what was good for the narod—the masses, as they were called—the numberless workers and peasants whom they ruled, for whose good they supposedly looked after?

  But probably the minor princes under Nikolay Romanov had thought and spoken the same way. And Lenin had ordered them all shot as enemies of the people. As modern movies spoke of the Great Patriotic War, so earlier movies had portrayed them for less sophisticated audiences as evil buffoons, hardly serious enemies, easily hated and easily killed, caricatures of real people who were all so different from those men who’d replaced them, of course. . . .

  As the princes of old had driven their troika-harnessed sleds over the very bodies of the peasants on their way to the royal court, so today the officers of the Moscow militia kept the center lane open for the new nomenklatura members who didn’t have time for traffic delays.

  Nothing had really changed. . . .

  Except that the czars of old had at least paid lip service to a higher authority. They’d financed St. Basil’s Cathedral here in Moscow, and other noblemen had financed countless other churches in lesser cities, because even the Romanovs had acknowledged a power higher than theirs. But the Party acknowledged no higher order.

  And so it could kill without regret, because killing was often a political necessity, a tactical advantage to be undertaken when and where convenient.

  Was that all this was? Zaitzev asked himself. Were they killing the Pope just because it was more convenient?

  Oleg Ivan’ch poured himself another portion of vodka from the nearby bottle and took another swallow.

  There were many inconveniences in his life. It was too long a walk from his desk to the water cooler. There were people at work whom he didn’t like—Stefan Yevgeniyevich Ivanov, for example, a more senior major in communications. How he’d managed to get promoted four years ago was a mystery to everyone in the section. He was disregarded by the more senior people as a drone who was unable to do any useful work. Zaitzev supposed every business had one such person, an embarrassment to the office, but not easily removed because . . . because he was just there and that was all there was to it. Were Ivanov out of the way, Oleg could be promoted—if not in rank, then in status to chief of the section. Every single breath Ivanov took was an inconvenience to Oleg Ivan’ch, but that didn’t give him the right to kill the more senior communicator, did it?

  No, he’d be arrested and prosecuted, and perhaps even executed for murder. Because it was forbidden by law. Because it was wrong. The law, the Party, and his own conscience told him that.

  But Andropov wanted to kill Father Karol, and his conscience didn’t say nay. Would some other conscience do so? Another swallow of vodka. Another snort. A conscience, on the Politburo?

  Even in the KGB, there were no ruminations. No debates. No open discussion. Just action messages and notices of completion or failure. Evaluations of foreigners, of course, discussions of the thinking of foreigners, real agents, or mere agents of influence—called “useful fools” in the KGB lexicon. Never had a field officer written back about an order and said, “No, comrade, we ought not to do that because it would be morally wrong.” Goderenko in Rome had come closest, posing the observation that killing Karol might have adverse consequences on operations. Did that mean that Ruslan Borissovich had a troubled conscience as well? No. Goderenko had three sons—one in the Soviet navy; another, he’d heard, at the KGB’s own academy out on the Ring Road; and the third in Moscow State University. If Ruslan Borissovich had any difficulties with the KGB, any action could mean, if not death, then at least serious embarrassment for his children, and few men took action like that.

  So, was his the only conscience in KGB? Zaitzev took a swallow to ponder that one. Probably not. There were thousands of men in The Centre, and thousands more elsewhere, and just the laws of statistics made it likely that there were plenty of “good” men (however one defined that), but how did one identify them? It was certain death—or lengthy imprisonment—to try to go looking for them. That was the baseline problem he had. There was no one in whom he could confide his doubts. No one with whom he could discuss his worries—not a doctor, not a priest . . . not even his wife, Irina . . .

  No, he had only his vodka bottle, and though it helped him think, after a fashion, it wasn’t much of a companion. Russian men were not averse to shedding tears, but they wouldn’t have helped either. Irina might ask a question, and he wouldn’t be able to answer to anyone’s satisfaction. All he had was sleep. It would not help, he was sure, and in this he was right.

  Another hour and two more slugs of the vodka at least drugged him into sleepiness. His wife was dozing in front of the TV—the Red Amy had won the Battle of Kursk, again, and the movie ended at the beginning of a long march that would lead to the Reichstag in Berlin, full of hope and enthusiasm for the bloody task. Zaitzev chuckled to himself. It was more than he had at the moment. He carried his empty glass to the kitchen, then roused his wife for the trip to the bedroom. He hoped that sleep would come quickly. The quarter-liter of alcohol in his belly should help. And so it did.

  “YOU KNOW, ARTHUR, there are a lot of things we don’t know about him,” Jim Greer said.

  “Andropov, you mean?”

  “We don’t even know if the bastard’s married,” the DDI continued.

  “Well, Robert, that’s your department,” the DCI observed, with a look at Bob Ritter.

  “We think he is, but he’s never brought his wife, if any, to an official function. That’s usually how we find out,” the DDO had to admit. “They often hide their families, like Mafia dons. They’re so anal about hiding everything over there. And, yeah, we’re not all that good about digging the information up, because it’s not operationally important.”

  “How he treats his wife and kids, if any,” Greer pointed out, “can be useful in profiling the guy.”

  “So you want me to task CARDINAL on something like that? He could do it, I’m sure, but why waste his time that way?”

  “Is it a waste? If he’s a wife-beater, it tells us something. If he’s a doting father, it tells us something else,” the DDI persisted.

  “He’s a thug. You can look at his photo and see that. Look how his staff acts around him. They’re stiff, like you’d have expected from Hitler’s staff,” Ritter responded. A few months before, a gaggle of American state governors had flown to Moscow for some sub-rosa diplomacy. The governor of Maryland, a liberal Democrat, had reported back that when Andropov had entered the reception room, he’d spotted him at once as a thug, then learned that it was Yuriy Vladimirovich, Chairman of the Committee for State Security. The Marylander had possessed a good eye for reading people, and that evaluation had gone into the Andropov file at Langley.

  “Well, he wouldn’t have been much of a judge,” Arthur Moore observed. He’d read the file, too. “At least not at the appeals level. Too interested in hanging the poor son of a bitch just to see if the rope breaks or not.” Not that Texas hadn’t had a few judges like that, once upon a time, but it was much more civilized now. There were fewer horses that needed stealing than men who needed killing, after all. “Okay, Robert, what can we do to flesh him out a little? Looks like he’s going to be their next General Secretary, after all. Strikes me as a good idea.”

  “I can rattle some cages. Why not ask Sir Basil what he can do? They’re better at the social stuff than we are, and it takes the heat off our people.”

  “I like Bas, but I don’t like having him hold that many markers for us,” Judge Moore answered.

  “Well, James, your protégé is over there. Have him ask the question. You get him an STU at home yet?”

  “Ought to have gotten there today, yes.”

  “So call your lad and have him ask, nice and casual-like.”

  Greer’s eyes went to the Judge. “Arthur?”

  “Approved. Lowercase this, though. Tell Ryan that it’s for his personal interest, not ours.”

  The Admiral check
ed his watch. “Okay, I can do that before I head home.”

  “Now, Bob, any progress on MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH?” the DCI asked with amusement, just to close down the afternoon meeting. It was a fun idea, but not a very serious one.

  “Arthur, let’s not discount it too much, shall we? They are vulnerable to the right sort of bullet, once we load it in the gun.”

  “Don’t talk that way in front of Congress. They might foul their panties,” Greer warned, with a laugh. “We’re supposed to enjoy peaceful coexistence with them.”

  “That didn’t work very well with Hitler. Stalin and Chamberlain both tried to make nice with the son of a bitch. Where did it get them? They are our enemies, gentlemen, and the sad truth is that we can’t have a real peace with them, like it or not. Their ideas and ours are too out of sync for that.” He held up his hands. “Yeah, I know, we’re not supposed to think that way, but thank God the President does, and we still work for him.”

  They didn’t have to comment on that. All three had voted for the current President, despite the institutional joke that the two things one never found at Langley were communists and . . . Republicans. No, the new President had a little iron in his spine and a fox’s instinct for opportunity. It especially appealed to Ritter, who was the cowboy of the three, if also the most abrasive.

  “Okay. I have some budget work to do for that hearing with the Senate day after tomorrow,” Moore announced, breaking up the meeting.

  RYAN WAS AT his computer, thinking over the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when the phone rang. It was the first time for it, with its oddly trilling ringer. He reached in his pocket for the plastic key, slid it into the appropriate slot, then lifted the receiver.

  “STAND BY,” a mechanical voice said, “SYNCHRONIZING THE LINE; STAND BY, SYNCHRONIZING THE LINE; STAND BY, SYNCHRONIZING THE LINE—LINE IS SECURE,” it said at last.

  “Hello,” Ryan said, wondering who had an STU and would call him this late. It turned out to be the obvious answer.

  “Hi, Jack,” a familiar voice greeted him. One nice thing about the STU: The digital technology made voices as clear as if the speaker were sitting in the room.

  Ryan checked the desk clock. “Kinda late there, sir.”

  “Not as late as in Jolly Old England. How’s the family?”

  “Mainly asleep at the moment. Cathy is probably reading a medical journal,” which was what she did instead of watching TV, anyway. “What can I do for you, Admiral?”

  “I have a little job for you.”

  “Okay,” Ryan responded.

  “Ask around—casual-like—about Yuriy Andropov. There are a few things about him we don’t know. Maybe Basil has the information we want.”

  “What exactly, sir?” Jack asked.

  “Is he married, and does he have any kids?”

  “We don’t know if he’s married?” Ryan realized that he hadn’t seen that information in the dossier, but he’d assumed it was elsewhere, and had taken no particular note of it.

  “That’s right. The Judge wants to see if Basil might know.”

  “Okay, I can ask Simon. How important is this?”

  “Like I said, casual-like, like it’s your own interest. Then call me back from there, your home, I mean.”

  “Will do, sir. We know his age, birthday, education, and stuff, but not if he’s married or has any kids, eh?”

  “That’s how it works sometimes.”

  “Yes, sir.” And that got Jack thinking. They knew everything about Brezhnev but his dick size. They did know his daughter’s dress size—12—which someone had thought important enough to get from the Belgian milliner who’d sold the silken wedding dress to her doting father, through the ambassador. But they didn’t know if the likely next General Secretary of the Soviet Union was married. Christ, the guy was pushing sixty, and they didn’t know? What the hell? “Okay, I can ask. That ought not to be too hard.”

  “Otherwise, how’s London?”

  “I like it here, and so does Cathy, but she’s a little dubious about their state medical-care system.”

  “Socialized medicine? I don’t blame her. I still get everything done at Bethesda, but it helps a little that I have ‘admiral’ in front of my name. It’s not quite as fast for a retired chief bosun’s mate.”

  “I bet.” In Ryan’s case, it helped a whole lot that his wife was on the faculty at Johns Hopkins. He didn’t talk to anyone in a lab coat without “professor” on his nametag, and he’d learned that in the field of medicine, the really smart ones were the teachers, unlike the rest of society.

  THE DREAMS CAME after midnight, though he had no way of knowing that. It was a clear Moscow summer day, and a man in white was walking across the Red Square. St. Basil’s Cathedral was behind him, and he was walking against the traffic past Lenin’s mausoleum. Some children were with him, and he was talking to them in a kindly way, as a favored uncle might . . . or perhaps a parish priest. Then Oleg knew that’s what he was, a parish priest. But why in white? With gold brocade, even. The children, four or five each of boys and girls, were holding his hands and looking up at him with innocent smiles. Then Oleg turned his head. Up at the top of the tomb, where they stood for the May Day parades, were the Politburo members: Brezhnev, Suslov, Ustinov, and Andropov. Andropov was holding a rifle and pointing at the little procession. There were other people around—faceless people walking aimlessly, going about their business. Then Oleg was standing with Andropov, listening to his words. He was arguing for the right to shoot the man. Be careful of the children, Yuriy Vladimirovich, Suslov warned. Yes, be careful, Brezhnev agreed. Ustinov reached over to adjust the sights on the rifle. They all ignored Zaitzev, who moved among them, trying to get their attention.

  But why? Zaitzev asked. Why are you doing this?

  Who is this? Brezhnev asked Andropov.

  Never mind him, Suslov snarled. Just shoot the bastard!

  Very well, Andropov said. He took his aim carefully, and Zaitzev was unable to intervene, despite being right there. Then the Chairman squeezed the trigger.

  Zaitzev was back on the street now. The first bullet struck a child, a boy on the priest’s right, who fell without a sound.

  Not him, you idiot—the priest! Mikhail Suslov screamed like a rabid dog.

  Andropov shot again, this time hitting a little blonde girl standing at the priest’s left. Her head exploded in red. Zaitzev bent down to help her, but she said it was all right, and so he left her and returned to the priest.

  Look out, why don’t you?

  Look out for what, my young comrade? The priest asked pleasantly, then he turned. Come, children, we’re off to see God.

  Andropov fired again. This time the bullet struck the priest square in the chest. There was a splash of blood, about the size and color of a rose. The priest grimaced, but kept going, with the smiling children in tow.

  Another shot, another rose on the chest, to the left of the first. But still he kept going, walking slowly.

  Are you hurt? Zaitzev asked.

  It is nothing, the priest replied. But why didn’t you stop him?

  But I tried! Zaitzev insisted.

  The priest stopped walking, turning to look him square in the face. Did you?

  That’s when the third bullet struck him right in the heart.

  Did you? the priest asked again. Now the children were looking at him and not the priest.

  Zaitzev found himself sitting up in the bed. It was just before four in the morning, the clock said. He was sweating profusely. There was only one thing to do. He rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom. There he urinated, then had himself a glass of water, and padded off to the kitchen. Sitting down by the sink, he lit a cigarette. Before he went back to sleep, he wanted to be fully awake. He didn’t want to walk back into that dream.

  Out the window, Moscow was quiet, the streets completely empty—not even a drunk staggering home. A good thing, too. No apartment house elevators would be working at this hour. There was not a c
ar in view, which was a little odd, but not so much as in a Western city.

  The cigarette achieved its goal. He was now awake enough to go back to sleep afresh. But even now he knew that the vision wouldn’t leave him. Most dreams faded away, just like cigarette smoke, but this one would not. Zaitzev was sure of that.

  CHAPTER 10

  BOLT FROM THE BLUE

  HE HAD A LOT of thinking to do. It was as if the decision had made itself, as if some alien force had overtaken his mind and, through it, his body, and he had been transformed into a mere spectator. Like most Russians, he didn’t shower, but washed his face and shaved with a blade razor, nicking himself three times in the process. Toilet paper took care of that—the symptoms, anyway, if not the cause. The images from the dream still paraded before his eyes like that war film on television. They continued to do so during breakfast, causing a distant look in his eyes that his wife noticed but decided not to comment on. Soon enough it was time to go to work. He went along the way like an automaton, taking the right path to the metro station by rote memory, his brain both quiescent and furiously active, as though he’d suddenly split into two separate but distantly connected people, moving along parallel paths to a destination he couldn’t see and didn’t understand. He was being carried there, though, like a chip of wood down mountain rapids, the rock walls passing so rapidly by his left and right that he couldn’t even see them. It came almost as a surprise when he found himself aboard the metro carriage, traveling down the darkened tunnels dug by political prisoners of Stalin’s under the direction of Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, surrounded by the quiet, almost faceless bodies of other Soviet citizens also making their way to workplaces for which they had little love and little sense of duty. But they went to them because it was how they earned the money with which they bought food for their families, minuscule cogs in the gigantic machine that was the Soviet state, which they all purported to serve and which purported to serve them and their families. . . .