The metro carriage stopped at his station, and Zaitzev made his way to the sliding metal door, to the platform, left to the escalator, up to the street on a fine, clear, late-summer day, again part of a crowd, but one that dispersed as it moved. A medium-sized contingent walked at a steady pace toward the stone edifice of The Centre, through the bronze doors, and past the first security checkpoint. Zaitzev showed his pass to the uniformed guard, who checked the picture against his face and jerked his head to the right, signaling that it was all right for him to enter the vast office building. Showing the same lack of emotion as he would any other day, Zaitzev took the stone steps down to the basement level through another checkpoint and finally into the open-bay work area of the signals center.
The night crew was just finishing up. At Zaitzev’s desk was the man who worked the midnight-to-eight shift, Nikolay Konstantinovich Dobrik, a newly promoted major like himself.
“Good morning, Oleg,” Dobrik said in comradely greeting, accompanied by a stretch in his swivel chair.
“And to you, Kolya. How was the night watch?”
“A lot of traffic last night from Washington. That madman of a president was at it again. Did you know that we are ‘the focus of evil in the modern world’?”
“He said that?” Zaitzev asked incredulously.
Dobrik nodded. “He did. The Washington rezidentura sent us the text of his speech—it was red meat for his party faithful, but it was incendiary even so. I expect the ambassador will get instructions from the foreign ministry about it, and the Politburo will probably have something to say. But at least it gave me a lively watch to read it all!”
“They didn’t put it on the pad, did they?” A complete transmission on a one-time cipher pad would have been a nightmare job for the clerks.
“No, it was a machine job, thank God,” Dobrik replied. His choice of words wasn’t entirely ironic. That euphemism was a common one, even at The Centre. “Our officers are trying to make sense of his words even now. The political department will be going over it for hours—days, more likely, complete with the psychiatrists, I wager.”
Zaitzev managed a chuckle. The back-and-forth between the head doctors and the field officers would undoubtedly be entertaining to read—and, like good clerks, they tended to read all of the entertaining dispatches.
“You have to wonder how such men get to rule major countries,” Dobrik observed, standing up and lighting a cigarette.
“I think they call it the democratic process,” Zaitzev responded.
“Well, in that case, thanks be for the Collective Will of the People as expressed through the beloved Party.” Dobrik was a good Party member, despite the planned irony of his remark, as was everyone in this room, of course.
“Indeed, Kolya. In any case”—Zaitzev looked over at the wall clock. He was six minutes early—”I relieve you, Comrade Major.”
“And I thank you, Comrade Major.” Dobrik headed off to the exit.
Zaitzev took the seat, still warm from Dobrik’s backside, and signed in on the time sheet, noting the time. Next he dumped the contents of the desk ashtray into the trash bucket—Dobrik never seemed to do that—and started a new day at the office. Relieving his colleague had been a rote process, if a pleasant one. He hardly knew Dobrik, except for these moments at the start of his day. Why anyone would volunteer for continuous night duty mystified him. At least Dobrik always left a clean desk behind, not one piled up with unfinished work, which gave Zaitzev a few minutes to get caught up and mentally organized for the day.
In this case, however, those few minutes merely brought back the images that, it seemed, were not about to go away. And so Oleg Ivanovich lit up his first work cigarette of the day and shuffled the papers on the metal desk while his mind was elsewhere, doing things that he himself didn’t want to know about just yet. It was ten minutes after the hour when a cipher clerk came to him with a folder.
“From Station Washington, Comrade Major,” the clerk announced.
“Thank you, comrade,” Zaitzev acknowledged.
Taking the manila folder, he opened it and started leafing through the dispatches.
Ah, he thought, this CASSIUS fellow has reported in… yes, more political intelligence. He didn’t know the name or face that went along with CASSIUS, but he had to be an aide to a senior parliamentarian, possibly even a senator. He delivered high-quality political intelligence that hinted at access to hard intelligence information. So a servant to a very senior American politician worked for the Soviet Union, too. He wasn’t paid, which made him an ideologically motivated agent, the very best sort.
He read through the dispatch and then searched his memory for the right recipient upstairs… Colonel Anatoliy Gregorovich Fokin, in the political department, whose address was Washington Desk, Line PR, First Department, First Chief Directorate, up on the fourth floor.
OUTSIDE OF TOWN, Colonel Ilya Fedorovich Bubovoy walked off his morning flight from Sofia. To catch it, he’d had to arise at three in the morning, an embassy car taking him to the airport for the flight to Moscow. The summons had come from Aleksey Rozhdestvenskiy, whom he’d known for some years and who had shown him the courtesy to call the day before and assure him that nothing untoward was meant by this summons to The Centre. Bubovoy had a clear conscience, but it was nice to know, even so. You never could be sure with KGB. Like children called to the principal’s office, officers were often known to have a few upper-gastric butterflies on the way into headquarters. In any case, his tie was properly knotted, and his good shoes shined properly. He did not wear his uniform, as his identity as the Sofia rezident was technically secret.
A uniformed sergeant of the Red Army met him at the gate and led him out to a car—in fact, the sergeant was KGB, but that wasn’t for public knowledge: Who knew if CIA or other Western services had eyes at the airport? Bubovoy picked up a copy of Sovietskiy Sports a kiosk on the walk out to the car. It would be thirty-five minutes in. Sofia’s soccer team had just beaten Moscow Dynamo, 3—2, a few days before. The colonel wondered if the local sportswriters would be calling for the heads of the Moscow team, couched in appropriate Marxist rhetoric, of course. Good socialists always won, but the sportswriters tended to get confused when one socialist team lost to another.
FOLEY WAS ON the metro as well, running a little late this morning. A power failure had reset his alarm clock without formal notice, so he’d been awakened by sunlight through the windows instead of the usual metallic buzz. As always, he tried not to look around too much, but he couldn’t help checking for the owner of the hand that had searched his pocket. But none of the faces looked back at him. He’d try again that afternoon, on the train that left the station at 17:41, just in case. In case of what? Foley didn’t know, but that was one of the exciting things about his chosen line of work. If it had been just happenstance, all well and good, but for the next few days he’d be on the same train, in the same coach, standing in much the same place. If he had a shadow, the man wouldn’t remark on it. The Russians actually found it comforting to trail someone who followed a routine—the randomness of Americans could drive them to distraction. So, he’d be a “good” American, and show them what they want, and they wouldn’t find it strange. The Moscow Chief of Station shook his head in amazement.
Reaching his stop, he took the escalator up to the street level, and from there it was a short walk to the embassy, just across the street from Our Lady of the Microchips, and the world’s largest microwave oven. Foley always liked to see the flag on the pole, and the Marines inside, more proof that he was in the right place. They always looked good, in their khaki shirts over dress-blue uniform trousers, bolstered pistols, and white caps.
His office was as shabby as usual—it was part of his cover to be a little on the untidy side.
But his cover did not include the communications department. It couldn’t. Heading embassy comms was Mike Russell, formerly a lieutenant colonel in the Army Security Agency—ASA was the Army’s own communications-security arm—and now a civilian with the National Security Agency, which officially did the same for the entire government.
Moscow was a hardship tour for Russell. Black and divorced-single, he didn’t get much female action here, since the Russians were notoriously dubious of people with dark skin. The knock on the door was distinctive.