The streets and sidewalks were wide here, but not overly crowded with people. Most Russians were at work, and there was no population of free women here, out shopping or heading to social affairs or golf outings—maybe the wives of the really important party members, that was all.
Kind of like the idle rich at home, Mary Pat reflected, if there were still such people. Her mom had always worked, at least in her memory—still did, in fact. But here working women used shovels while the men drove dump trucks. They were always fixing potholes in the streets, but never quite fixing them well enough. Just like in Washington and New York, she thought.
There were street vendors here, though, selling ice cream, and she bought one for little Eddie, whose eyes were taking it all in. It troubled her conscience to inflict this place and this mission on her son, but he was only four and it would be a good learning experience for him. At least he’d grow up bilingual. He’d also learn to appreciate his country more than most American kids, and that, she thought, was a good thing. So, she had a tail. How good was he? Perhaps it was time to find out. She reached into her purse and surreptitiously removed a length of paper tape. It was red in color, a bright red. Turning a corner, she stuck it to a lamppost in a gesture so casual as to be invisible and kept going. Then, fifty yards down the new block, she turned to look back as though lost… and she saw him walk right past that lamppost. So he hadn’t seen her leave the flag signal. Had he seen her, he would at least have looked… and he was the only one following her; her route had been so randomly chosen that there wouldn’t be anyone else assigned to her, unless there was a really major surveillance effort applied to her, and that didn’t seem likely. She’d never been blown on any of her field assignments. She remembered every single moment of her training at The Farm in Tidewater, Virginia. She’d been at the top of her class, and she knew she was good—and better still, she knew that you were never so good that you could forget to be careful. But as long as you were careful, you could ride any horse. Grandfather Vanya had taught her to ride, too.
She and little Eddie would have many adventures in this city, Mary Pat thought. She’d let it wait until the KGB got tired of hanging a shadow on her, and then she could really cut loose. She wondered whom she might recruit to work for CIA, in addition to running the established agents-in-place. Yeah, she was in the belly of the beast, all right, and her job was to give the son of a bitch a bleeding ulcer.
“VERY WELL, Aleksey Nikolay’ch, you know the man,” Andropov said. “What do I tell him now?”
It was a sign of the Chairman’s intelligence that he didn’t lash out with a scorching reply, to put the Rome rezident back in his place. Only a fool stomped on his senior subordinates.
“He asks for guidance—the scope of the operation and so forth. We should give it to him. This brings into question exactly what you are contemplating, Comrade Chairman. Have you thought it through to that point?”
“Very well, Colonel, what do you think we should do?”
“Comrade Chairman, there is an expression the Americans use which I have learned to respect: That is above my pay grade.”
“Are you telling me that you do not play Chairman yourself—in your own mind?” Yuriy Vladimirovich asked, rather pointedly.
“Honestly, no, I limit my thinking to that which I understand—operational questions. I am not competent to trespass into high political confines, comrade.”
A clever answer, if not a truthful one, Andropov noted. But Rozhdestvenskiy would be unable to discuss whatever high-level thoughts he might have, because no one else at KGB was cleared to discuss such things. Now, he might be interviewed by some very senior member of the Party’s Central Committee, on orders from the Politburo, but such an order would almost have to come from Brezhnev himself. And that, Yuriy Vladimirovich thought, was not likely at this time. So, yes, the colonel would think about it in the privacy of his own mind, as all subordinates did, but as a professional KGB officer, rather than a Party flack, he would leave such thoughts right there.
“Very well, we will dispense with the political considerations entirely. Consider this a theoretical question: How would one kill this priest?”
Rozhdestvenskiy looked uneasy.
“Sit,” the Chairman told his subordinate. “You have planned complex operations before. Take your time to walk through this one.”
Rozhdestvenskiy took his seat before speaking. “First of all, I would ask for assistance from someone better-versed in such things. We have several such officers here in The Centre. But… since you ask me to think about it in theoretical terms…” The colonel’s voice trailed off and his eyes went up and to the left. When he started speaking again, his words came slowly.
“First of all, we would use Goderenko’s station only for information—reconnaissance of the target, that sort of thing. We would not want to use Station Rome’s people in any active way… In fact, I would advise against using Soviet personnel at all for the active parts of the operation.”
“Why?” Andropov asked.
“The Italian police are professionally trained, and for an investigation of this magnitude, they would throw people into it, assign their very best men. At any event like this, there will be witnesses. Everyone on earth has two eyes and a memory. Some have intelligence. That sort of thing cannot be predicted. While on the one hand, this militates in favor of, let us say, a sniper and a long-range shot, such a methodology would point to a state-level operation. Such a sniper would have to be well-trained and properly equipped. That would mean a soldier. A soldier means an army. An army means a nation-state—and which nation-state would wish to kill the Pope?” Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy asked. “A truly black operation cannot be traced back to its point of origin.”
Andropov lit a cigarette and nodded. He’d chosen well. This colonel was no man’s fool. “Go on.”
“Ideally, the shooter would have no ties whatsoever to the Soviet Union. We must be sure of that because we cannot ignore the possibility that he will be arrested. If he is arrested, he will be questioned. Most men talk under questioning, either for psychological or physical reasons.” Rozhdestvenskiy reached into his pocket and pulled out his own cigarette. “I remember reading about a Mafia killing in America…” Again, the voice tailed off and his eyes fixed on the far wall while examining something in the past.
“Yes?” the Chairman prompted.
“A killing in New York City. One of their senior people was at odds with his peers, and they decided to not merely kill him, but to do so with some degree of ignominy. They had him killed by a black man. To the Mafia, that is particularly disgraceful,” Rozhdestvenskiy explained. “In any case, the shooter was immediately thereafter killed by another man, presumably a Mafia assassin who then made a successful escape—no doubt he had assistance, which proves that it was a carefully planned exercise. The crime was never solved. It was a perfect technical exercise. The target was killed and so was the assassin. The true killers—those who had planned the exercise—accomplished their mission, and gained prestige within their organization, but were never punished for it.”
“Criminal thugs,” Andropov snorted.
“Yes, Comrade Chairman, but a properly carried-out mission is worthy of study, even so. It does not completely apply to our task at hand, because it was supposed to look like a well-executed Mafia murder. But the shooter got close to his target because he was manifestly not a member of a Mafia gang and could not later implicate or identify those who paid him to commit the act. That is precisely what we would wish to achieve. Of course, we cannot copy this operation in full—for example, killing off our shooter would point directly to us. This cannot be like the elimination of Leon Trotsky. In that case, the origin of the operation was not really concealed. As with the Mafia killing I just cited, it was supposed to be something of a public announcement.” That a Soviet state action was a direct parallel to this New York City gangster rubout did not need much elaboration in Rozhdestvenskiy’s eyes. But in his operational brain, the Trotsky killing and the Mafia assassination were an interesting confluence of tactics and objectives.
“Comrade, I need some time to consider this fully.”
“I’ll give you two hours,” Chairman Andropov responded generously.
Rozhdestvenskiy stood, came to attention, and walked out through the clothes dresser into the secretary’s room.