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 protege 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 checked 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.”