So, the Sofia rezident was just here? Zaitzev didn’t have to ask. “Yes, Comrade Colonel. Shall I call you to confirm the dispatch?”
“Yes, thank you, Comrade Major.”
“I serve the Soviet Union,” Zaitzev assured him.
Rozhdestvenskiy made his way back upstairs, while Zaitzev went through the normal, mind-numbing routine of encryption.
MOST SECRET
IMMEDIATE AND URGENT
FROM: OFFICE OF CHAIRMAN, Moscow CENTRE
To: REZIDENT SOFIA
REFERENCE: OPERATIONAL DESIGNATOR 15-8-82-666
FOR ALL FUTURE COMMUNICATIONS YOUR OPERATIONAL CONTACT WILL BE COLONEL ROZHDESTVENSKIY. BY ORDER OF THE CHAIRMAN.
It was just a housekeeping message, but coded “Immediate and Urgent.” That meant it was important to Chairman Andropov, and the reference made it an operation, not just a query to some rezident.
They really want to do it, Zaitzev realized.
What the hell could he do about it? No one in this room—no one in the entire building—could forestall this operation. But outside the building…?
Zaitzev lit a cigarette. He’d be taking the metro home as usual. Would that American be there as well?
He was contemplating treason, he thought chillingly. The crime had a fearsome sound to it, with an even more fearsome reality. But the other side of that coin was to sit here and read over the dispatches while an innocent man was killed… and, no, he could not do that.
Zaitzev took a message blank off a centimeter-thick pad of them on his desk. He set the single sheet of paper on the desk surface and wrote in English, using a #1 soft pencil: IF YOU FIND THIS INTERESTING, WEAR A GREEN TIE TOMORROW. That was as far as his courage stretched this afternoon. He folded the form and tucked it inside his cigarette pack, careful to do everything with normal motions, because anything the least bit unusual in this room was noticed. Next, he scribbled something on another blank form, then crumpled and tossed it into the waste can, and went back to his usual work. For the next three hours, Oleg Ivan’ch would rethink his action every time he reached in his pocket for a smoke. Every time, he’d consider taking out the folded sheet of paper and ripping it to small bits before relegating it to the waste can and then the burn bag. But every time, he’d leave it there, telling himself that he’d done nothing yet. Above all, he tried to set his mind free, to do his regular work and deliberately put himself on auto-pilot, trying to let the day go by. Finally, he told himself that his fate was in hands other than his own. If he got home without anything unusual happening, he’d take the folded form out of his cigarette pack and burn it in his kitchen, and that would be the end of it. About four in the afternoon, Zaitzev looked up at the water-stained ceiling of Communications and whispered something akin to a prayer.
Finally, the workday ended. He took the usual route at the usual pace to the usual metro stop, down the escalator, onto the platform. The metro schedule was as predictable as the coming and going of the tides, and he boarded the carriage along with a hundred others.
Then his heart almost stopped cold in his chest: There was the American, standing in exactly the same place, reading a newspaper in his right hand, with his left holding on to the overhead rail, his raincoat unbuttoned and loose around his slender frame. The open pocket beckoned to him as the Sirens had to Odysseus. Zaitzev made his way to the center of the railcar, shuffling between other riders. His right hand fished in his shirt pocket for the cigarette pack. He deftly removed the message blank from the pack and palmed it, shuffling about the car as it slowed for a station, making room for another passenger. It worked perfectly. He jostled into the American and made the transfer, then drew back.
Zaitzev took a deep breath. The deed was done. What happened now was indeed in other hands.
Was the man really an American—or some false-flag from the Second Chief Directorate?
Had the “American” seen his face?
Did that matter? Weren’t his fingerprints on the message form? Zaitzev didn’t have a clue. He’d been careful when tearing off the form—and, if questioned, he could always say that the pad just lay on his desk, and anyone could have taken a form—even asked him for it! It might be enough even to foil a KGB investigation if he stuck to his story. Soon enough, he was off the subway car and walking into the open air. He hoped nobody saw his hands shake as he lit up a smoke.
FOLEY’S HIGHLY TRAINED senses had failed him. With his coat loose about him, he hadn’t noticed any touch, except for the usual bumps associated with the subway, whether in Moscow or New York. But as he made his way off the train, he stuck his left hand into the left-side pocket, and there was something there, and he knew that it wasn’t something he’d placed there himself. A quizzical look crossed his face, which his training quickly erased. He succumbed to the temptation to look around for a tail, but instantly realized that, given his regular schedule, there’d be a fresh face here on the surface to track him, or most likely a series of cameras atop the surrounding buildings. Movie film was as cheap here as everywhere else in the world. And so he walked home, just as on any other day, nodded at the guard at the gate, and then made his way into the elevator, then through the door.
“I’m home, honey,” Ed Foley announced, taking out the paper only after the door was closed. He was reasonably certain that there were no cameras in the apartment—even American technology wasn’t that far along yet, and he’d seen enough of Moscow to be unimpressed with their technical capabilities. His fingers unfolded the paper, and then he stopped cold in his tracks.
“What’s for dinner?” he called out.
“Come and see, Ed.” Mary Pat’s voice came from the kitchen.
Hamburgers were sizzling on the stove. Mashed potatoes and gravy, plus baked beans, your basic American working-class dinner. But the bread was Russian, and that wasn’t bad. Little Eddie was in front of the TV, watching a Transformers tape, which would keep him occupied for the next twenty minutes.
“Anything interesting happen today?” Mary Pat asked from the stove. She turned for her kiss, and her husband replied with their personal code phrase for the unusual.
“Not a thing, baby.” That piqued her interest enough that when he held up the sheet of paper, she took it, and her eyes went wide.
It wasn’t so much the handwritten message as the printed header: STATE SECURITY OFFICIAL COMMUNICATION.
Damn. His wife’s lips mouthed the word.
The Moscow COS nodded thoughtfully.
“Can you watch the burgers, honey? I have to get something.”
Ed took the spatula and flipped one over. His wife was back quickly, holding a kelly green tie.
CHAPTER 11:
HAND JIVE
OF COURSE, there was little to be done at the moment. Dinner was served and eaten, and Eddie went back to his VCR and cartoon tapes. Four-year-olds were easy to please, even in Moscow. His parents got down to business. Years ago, they’d seen The Miracle Worker on TV, in which Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft) taught Helen Keller (Patty Duke) the use of the manual alphabet, and they’d decided it was a useful skill to learn as a means of communicating not quickly but quietly and with their own shorthand.
W[ell], what do [yo]u think? Ed asked Mary.
This could b[e] pretty h[ot], his wife replied.
Y[ep].
Ed, this guy works in MERCURY, th[eir] version anyway! Wow!
More likely he just has access to their mess[age] forms, the Chief of Station cautioned slowly. But I’ll wear the green tie and take the same subway train for the next w[eek] or so.
FAB, his wife agreed, which was shorthand for Fuckin’ A, Bubba!
Hope it isn’t a trap or a false-flag, Ed observed.
Part of the terr[itory], h[oney], MP responded. The thought of being burned didn’t frighten her, though she didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment. She looked for opportunities more than her husband did—he worried more. But, strangely, not this time. If the Russians had “made” him as the Chief of Station or even just as a field spook—not likely, Ed thought—they’d be total idiots to burn him like this, not this fast and not this amateurishly. Unless they were trying to make some sort of political point, and he couldn’t see the logic of that—and the KBG was as coldly logical as Mr. Spock ever was on planet Vulcan. Even the FBI wouldn’t play this loose a game. So this opportunity had to be real, unless KGB was shaking down every embassy employee it could, just to see what might fall off the tree. Possible, but damned unlikely, and therefore worth the gamble, Foley judged. He’d wear the green tie and see what happened, and be damned careful to check all the faces on the subway car.