‘Oh, don’t look so shocked or disgusted or whatever emotion that expression of yours is supposed to signify, Boris. We’re not barbarians, my young friend. I’m not talking extermination or Siberia or pre-frontal lobotomy but eviction, emigration, kicking or allowing them to drag their arses out of here! Oh yes!
‘All of these things I told him and more. And I guaranteed them – strictly between Leonid and myself, you understand – if only he’d let me do my job and get the KGB right off my back. What were these starch-faced policemen anyway but spies for their boss? And why should they spy on me, loyal as any man and a damn sight more than most? But over and above everything else, how could I hope to maintain any sort of secrecy -absolutely necessary in an organisation such as ours – with members of another branch peering over my shoulder and reporting back to their master everything I was doing, who couldn’t possibly understand anything I was doing? They would only laugh, deride what they could not hope to fathom, blow any last vestige of secrecy sky high! And yet again our foreign adversaries would forge ahead; for make no mistake, Boris, the Americans and the British -yes, and the French and the Chinese, too – they also have their mind-spies!
‘”But give me four years, Leonid,” I said, “four years free of Yuri Andropov’s monkeys, and I will give you the sprouting germ of an ESPionage network whose incredible potential you cannot possibly imagine!”‘
‘Strong stuff!’ Dragosani was suitably impressed. ‘And his reply?’
‘He said, “Gregor, old friend, old war-horse, old Comrade … all right, you shall have your four years. And I shall sit and wait and see to it that your bills are paid, and keep you and your branch in funds enough to run your Volgas and drink your vodka, and I shall watch all of these things you’ve promised or predicted come to pass, which will make me very grateful to you. And if in four years they have not come to pass – then I shall have your balls!”‘
‘And so you’ve put your faith in Vlady’s predictions,’ said Dragosani, nodding. ‘Are you so sure, then, that this seer of ours is infallible?’ ‘Oh, yes!’ answered Borowitz. ‘He’s almost as good at predicting the future as you are at sniffing out the secrets of the dead.’
‘Huh!’ This time Dragosani was not impressed. ‘And why then didn’t he predict that mess at the Chateau? Surely he could have foreseen a disaster of that magnitude?’
‘But he did predict it,’ answered Borowitz, ‘in a roundabout way. Two weeks ago he told me I would shortly lose both my right- and left-hand men. And I did. He also said I would appoint others – but this time from the rank and file, as it were.’
Dragosani couldn’t conceal his interest. ‘You have someone in mind?’
Borowitz nodded. ‘You,’ he answered, ‘and perhaps Igor Vlady himself.’
‘I want no rival,’ said Dragosani at once.
‘Rivalry does not come into it. Your talents are diverse. He does not profess to be a necromancer, you cannot read the future. The reason there must be two of you is to ensure continuity if anything should happen to either one of you.’
‘Yes, and we had two predecessors,’ Dragosani growled. ‘What were their talents – and did they also start out without rivalry?’
Borowitz sighed. ‘In the beginning,’ he patiently began to explain, ‘when I was first pulling the branch together, I was short of actual effective talent in the ranks: my first troop of agents, ESPers, were untried. Those with real talent – like Vlady, who I’ve had from the beginning, and who improves all the time; and, more recently, like yourself – were too important to tie down with routine administration. Ustinov, also with us from the start but purely as an administrator, and later Gerkhov, fitted their positions precisely. They had no ESP-talent whatsoever but both seemed to have open minds – difficult to find in Russia these days, not that can stay on the right side o the political fence at the same time – and I had hopes that at least one of them would become as deeply interested and involved with our work as I am. When jealousy intervened and they became rivals, I decided to let them weed themselves out without intervention. Natural selection, you might say. But you and Vlady are different kettles of fish entirely. I will not permit rivalry between you. Put it out of your mind.’