“Then load the tanks on a train and send them to Sofia. Comrades, we have a vote to take,” the General Secretary told the Politburo. The eleven voting members felt a little bit railroaded. The seven “candidate,” or nonvoting, members just watched and nodded.
As usual, the vote was unanimous. No one voted no, despite the fact that some of them had doubts concealed in their silence. In this room, one did not want to stray too far from the kollectiv spirit. Power here was as circumscribed as everywhere else in the world, a fact upon which they rarely reflected and on which they never acted.
“Very well.” Brezhnev turned his head to Andropov. “KGB is authorized to undertake this operation, and may God have mercy on his Polish soul,” he added, in a bit of peasant levity. “So, what is next?”
“Comrade, if I may…” Andropov said, getting a nod. “Our brother and friend Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov will soon depart this life, after long and devoted service to the Party we all hold dear. His chair is already empty due to his illness, and needs filling. I propose Mikhail Yevgeniyevich Alexandrov as the next Central Committee Secretary for Ideology, with full voting membership in the Politburo.”
Alexandrov even managed to blush. He held up his hands and spoke with the utmost sincerity. “Comrades, my—our—friend is still alive. I cannot take his place while he still lives.”
“It is good of you to put it that way, Misha,” the General Secretary observed, using the affectionate abbreviation for his Christian name. “But Mikhail Andreyevich is gravely ill and has not long to live. I suggest that we table Yuriy’s motion for the moment. Such an appointment must, of course, be ratified by the Central Committee as a whole.” But that was less than a formality, as everyone here knew. Brezhnev had just given his blessing to Alexandrov’s promotion, and that was all he needed.
“Thank you, Comrade General Secretary.” And now Alexandrov could look at the empty chair at Brezhnev’s left hand and know that in a few weeks it would soon be his officially. He’d weep like all the others when Suslov died, and the tears would be just as cold. And Mikhail Andreyevich would even understand. His biggest problem now was facing death, the greatest of life’s mysteries, and wondering what lay on the other side of it. It was something everyone at the table would have to face, but for all of them it was sufficiently distant to be dismissed… for the moment. That, Yuriy Andropov thought, was one difference between them and the Pope, who was soon to die at their hands.
The meeting broke up just after four in the afternoon. The men took their leave, as always, with friendly words and shaken hands, before they went their separate ways. Andropov, with Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy in tow, headed out toward the end. Soon he would be the last to leave, as was the prerogative of the General Secretary.
“Comrade Chairman, a moment, if you would allow it,” Rozhdestvenskiy said, heading for the men’s room. He emerged a minute and a half later with an easier stride.
“You did well, Aleksey,” Andropov told him, as they resumed their way out—the Chairman took the steps down instead of the elevator. “So, what did you make of it?”
“Comrade Brezhnev is frailer than I expected.”
“Yes, he is. It didn’t help him very much to stop smoking,” Andropov reached into his coat pocket for his Marlboros—at the Politburo meetings, people now avoided smoking, out of deference to Leonid Ilyich, and the KGB Chairman needed a cigarette right now. “What else?”
“It was remarkably collegial. I expected more disagreement, more arguing, I suppose.” Discussions between spooks at #2 Dzerzhinskiy Square were far more lively, especially when discussing operations.
“They are all cautious players, Aleksey. Those with so much power at their fingertips always are—and they should be. But they often do not take action because they fear doing anything new and different.” Andropov knew that his country needed new and different things, and wondered how difficult it would be for him to bring them about.
“But, Comrade Chairman, our operation—”
“That’s different, Colonel. When they feel threatened, then they can take action. They fear the Pope. And they are probably right to. Don’t you think?”
“Comrade Chairman, I am a colonel only. I serve. I do not rule.”
“Keep it that way, Aleksey. It’s safer.” Andropov entered the car and sat down, and immediately became lost in his thoughts.
AN HOUR LATER, Zaitzev was finishing up his day and awaiting his relief. Then Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy appeared at his side without warning.
“Captain, I need you to send this out to Sofia immediately.” He paused. “Does anyone else see these messages?”
“No, Comrade Colonel. The message designator labels it as something to come to me only. That is in the order book.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.” He handed over the blank.
“By your order, Comrade Colonel.” Zaitzev watched him head off. He barely had time to get this done before taking his leave.
MOST SECRET
IMMEDIATE AND URGENT
FROM: OFFICE OF CHAIRMAN, Moscow CENTRE
To: REZIDENT SOFIA
REFERENCE: OPERATIONAL DESIGNATOR 15-8-82-666
OPERATION APPROVED. NEXT STEP INTERMEDIATE APPROVAL BULGARIAN POLITBURO. EXPECT FULL APPROVAL TEN DAYS OR LESS. CONTINUE PLANNING FOR OPERATION.
Zaitzev saw it telexed off, then handed the copy to a messenger to be hand-delivered to the top floor. Then he took his leave, walking a little more swiftly than usual. Out on the street, he fished out his cigarette pack to get himself another Trud before going down the escalator to the metro platform. There, he checked the ceiling clock. He’d actually walked too quickly, he saw, and so let the train go without him, fumbling with his cigarette pack as an excuse if anyone was watching him—but then again, if anyone were watching him now, he was already a dead man. The thought made his hands shake, but it was too late for that. The next train came out of the tunnel exactly on time, and he boarded the proper carriage, shuffling in with fifteen or so other workers…
And there he was. Reading a newspaper, wearing an unbuttoned raincoat, his right hand on the chrome overhead bar.
Zaitzev wandered that way. In his right hand was the second note that he’d just fished out of his cigarette pack. Yes, he saw belatedly, the man was wearing a bright green tie, held in place by a gold-colored tie bar. A brown suit, a clean white shirt that looked expensive, and his face was occupied with the paper. The man did not look around. Zaitzev slid closer.
ONE OF THE things Ed Foley had studied at The Farm was how to perfect his peripheral vision. With training and practice, your eyes could actually see a wider field than the unschooled realized. At CIA camp, he’d learned by walking down the street and reading house numbers without turning his head. Best of all, it was like riding a bicycle. Once learned, it was always there if you just concentrated when you needed to. And so he noticed that someone was moving slowly toward him—white male, about five-nine, medium build, brown eyes and hair, drab clothes, needed a haircut. He didn’t see the face clearly enough to remember it or to pick it out of a lineup. A Slavic face, that was all. Expressionless, and the eyes were definitely in his direction. Foley didn’t allow his breathing to change, though his heart might have increased its frequency by a few extra beats.
Come on, Ivan. I’m wearing the fucking tie, just like you said. He’d gotten on at the right stop. KGB headquarters was just a block from the escalator. So, yeah, this guy was probably a spook. And not a false-flag. If this was some Second Chief Directorate guy, they would have staged it differently. This was too obvious, too amateurish, not the way KGB would do things. They would have done it at a different subway stop.
This guy’s fuckin’ real, Foley told himself. He forced himself to be patient, which wasn’t easy, even for this experienced field officer, but he took an imperceptible deep breath and waited, telling the nerve endings in his skin to report the least shift in the weight of his topcoat on his shoulders…
ZAITZEV LOOKED AROUND the car as casually as he could. There were no eyes on him, none even looking in this general direction. So his right hand slid into the open pocket, quickly but not too quickly. Then he withdrew.
BINGO. FOLEY THOUGHT, as his heart skipped two or three beats. Okay, Ivan, what’s the message this time?
Again, he had to be patient. No sense getting this guy killed. If he was really a guy from the Russian MERCURY, then there was no telling how important this might be. Like the first nibble on a deep-sea fishing boat. Was this a marlin, a shark, or a lost boot? If a nice blue marlin, how big? But he couldn’t even pull back on the fishing rod to set the hook yet. No, that would come later, if it came at all. The recruitment phase of field operations—taking some innocent Soviet citizen and making him an agent, an information-procuring asset of the CIA, a spy—that was harder than going to a CYO dance and getting laid. The real trick was not getting the girl pregnant—or the agent killed. No, the way the game was played, you had the first fast dance, then the first slow dance, then the first kiss, then the first grope, and then, if you got lucky, unbuttoning the blouse… and then…