He didn’t usually dress in the paramilitary uniform—most KGB employees did not choose to do so, as though their employment might make them seem tainted to their fellow citizens. Neither did he hide it. If anyone asked, he gave an honest answer, and the questioning usually stopped there, because everyone knew that you didn’t ask questions about what went on at the Committee for State Security. There were occasional movies and TV shows about KGB, and some of them were even fairly honest, though they gave little away concerning methods and sources beyond what some fiction writer might imagine, which wasn’t always all that accurate. There was a small office at The Centre that consulted on such things, usually taking things out and—rarely—putting accurate things in, because it was in his agency’s interest to be fearful and forbidding to Soviet citizens and foreigners alike. How many ordinary citizens supplement their incomes by being informers? Zaitzev wondered. He almost never saw any dispatches about that—that sort of thing rarely went overseas.
The things that did go out of the country were troubling enough. Colonel Bubovoy would probably be in Moscow the next day. There was regular air service between Sofia and Moscow through Aeroflot. Colonel Goderenko in Rome had been told to sit down and shut up, and to forward to The Centre the Pope’s appearance schedule for the indefinite future. Andropov hadn’t lost interest in that bit of information.
And now the Bulgarians would be involved. Zaitzev worried about that, but he didn’t need to wonder all that much. He’d seen those dispatches before. The Bulgarian State Security Service was the loyal vassal of KGB. The communicator knew that. He’d seen enough messages go to Sofia, sometimes through Bubovoy, sometimes directly, and sometimes for the purpose of ending someone’s life. KGB didn’t do much of that anymore, but Diryhavna Susurnost did, on occasion. Zaitzev imagined that they had a small subunit of the DS officers who were trained and skilled and practiced at that particular skill. And the message header had the 666 suffix, so this dispatch concerned the same thing that Rome had been initially queried on. So this was going forward.
His agency—his country—wanted to kill that Polish priest, and that, Zaitzev thought, was probably a bad thing.
He took the escalator down to the subterranean station amid the usual afterwork crowd. Usually, the crowd of people was comforting. It meant that Zaitzev was in his element, surrounded by his countrymen, people just like himself, serving one another and the State. But was that true? What would these people think of Andropov’s mission? It was hard to gauge. The subway ride was usually quiet. Some people might talk to friends, but group discussions were rare, except perhaps for some unusual sporting event, a bad referee’s call at a soccer match, or a particularly spectacular play on the hockey rink. Other than that, people were usually alone with their thoughts.
The train stopped, and Zaitzev shuffled aboard. As usual, there were no seats available. He grasped the overhead handrail and kept thinking.
Are the others on the train thinking as well? If so, about what? Jobs? Children? Wives? Lovers? Food? You couldn’t tell. Even Zaitzev couldn’t tell, and he’d seen these people—these same people—on the metro for years. He knew only a few names, mainly given names overheard in conversations. No, he knew them only by their favorite sports teams…
It struck him suddenly and hard how alone he was in his society. How many real friends do I have? Zaitzev asked himself. The answer was shockingly few. Oh, sure, there were people at work he chatted with. He knew the most intimate details about their wives and children—but friends in whom he could confide, with whom he could talk over some troubling development, to whom he could go for guidance in a troubling situation… No, he didn’t have any of those. That made him unusual in Moscow. Russians often made deep and close friendships, and consecrated them often enough with the deepest and sometimes the darkest of secrets, as though daring one of their intimates to be a KGB informer, as though courting a trip to the Gulag. But his job denied him that. He’d never dare to discuss the things he did at work, not even to his coworkers.
No, whatever problems he had with this 666 series of messages were ones he had to work out for himself. Even his Irina couldn’t know. She might talk with her friends at GUM, and that would surely be death for him. Zaitzev let out a breath and looked around…
There he was again, that American embassy official, reading Sovietskiy Sport and minding his own business. He was wearing a raincoat—rain had been forecast, but had not materialized—but not a hat. The coat was open, not buttoned or belted. He was less than two meters away…
On an impulse, Zaitzev shifted his position from one side of the car to the other, switching hands on the overhead rail as though to stretch a stiff muscle. That move put him next to the American. And, on further impulse, Zaitzev slid his hand into the raincoat pocket. There was nothing in there, no keys or pocket change, just empty cloth. But he had established that he could reach into this American’s pocket and remove his hand without notice. He backed away, sweeping his eyes around the subway car to see if anyone had noticed or had even been looking his way. But… no, almost certainly not. His maneuver had gone undetected, even by the American.
FOLEY DIDN’T EVEN let his eyes move as he read to the bottom of the hockey article. Had he been in New York or any other Western city, he would have thought that someone had just attempted to pick his pocket. Strangely, he didn’t expect that here. Soviet citizens were not allowed to have Western currency, and so there was nothing but trouble to be gained in robbing an American on the street, much less picking his pocket. And KGB, which was probably still shadowing him, was most unlikely to do anything like that. If they wanted to lift his wallet, they’d use a two-man team, as professional American pickpockets did, one to delay and distract, and the other to make the lift. You could get almost anyone that way, unless the target was alerted, and staying alert for so long was a lot to ask, even of an expert professional spook. So you employed passive defenses, like wrapping a rubber band or two around the wallet—simple, but very effective, and one of the things they taught you at The Farm, the sort of basic tradecraft that didn’t announce “spy!” to everyone. The NYPD advised people to do the same thing on the streets of Manhattan, and he was supposed to look like an American. Since he had a diplomatic passport and “legal” cover, theoretically, his person was inviolable. Not necessarily from a street thug, of course, and both the KGB and the FBI were not above having a highly trained street thug rough someone up, albeit within carefully thought-through parameters, lest things get out of control. The entire state of affairs made the Imperial Court of Byzantium look simple by comparison, but Ed Foley didn’t make the rules.
Those rules now did not allow him to check his pocket or make the least sign that he knew that someone’s hand had been in there. Maybe someone had dropped him a note—a notice of desire to defect, even. But why him? His cover was supposed to be as solid as a T-bill, unless someone in the embassy had made a very shrewd guess and then ratted him out… But no, even then, KGB wouldn’t tip their hand this quickly. They’d watch him for a few weeks at least, just to see what else he might lead them to. KGB played the game too skillfully for that sort of play, so, no, there wasn’t much chance that whoever had searched his pocket was a Second Chief Directorate guy. And probably not a pickpocket, either. Then what? Foley wondered. He’d have to be patient to find out, but Foley knew a lot about patience. He kept on reading his newspaper. If it were someone who wanted to do a little business, why scare him off? At the very least, he’d let him feel clever. It was always useful to help other people feel smart. That way, they could continue their mistakes.
Three more stops before he got off the subway. Foley had known up front that it would be a lot more productive to ride it than to drive the car. That Mercedes was just too standout-ish for this place. It would make Mary Pat stand out, too, but to her way of thinking, that worked for her rather than against. His wife had brilliant field instincts, better than his, but she often scared him in her daring. It wasn’t so much that Mary Pat was a risk-taker. Every member of the DO took risks. It was her relish for doing so that occasionally worried him. For him, playing with the Russians was part of the job. It was business, as Don Vito Corleone would have put it, not personal. But for Mary Patricia, it was as personal as hell, because of her grandfather.