“What is that?”
“We’re going to Budapest tomorrow.”
That snapped her head around. “What?”
“I decided to take my vacation days, and there’s a new conductor in Budapest now, Jozsef Rozsa. I knew you liked classical music, and I decided to take you and zaichik there, dear.”
“Oh,” was all she had to say. “But what about my job at GUM?”
“Can’t you get free of that?”
“Well, yes, I suppose,” Irina admitted. “But why Budapest?”
“Well, the music, and we can buy some things there. I have a list of items to get for people at The Centre,” he told her.
“Ah, yes… we can get some nice things for Svetlana,” she thought out loud on reflection. Working at GUM, she knew what was available in Hungary that she’d never get in Moscow, even in the “closed” stores. “Who is this Rozsa, anyway?”
“He’s a young Hungarian conductor touring Eastern Europe. He has a fine reputation, darling. The program is supposed to be Brahms and Bach, I think—one of the Hungarian state orchestras and,” he added, “a lot of good shopping.” There wasn’t a woman in all the world who wouldn’t respond favorably to that opportunity, Oleg judged. He waited patiently for the next objection:
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
“My dear, that is why we’re going to Budapest. You will be able to buy anything you need there.”
“Well…”
“And remember to pack everything you need in one bag. We’ll take empty bags for all the things we’re buying for ourselves and our friends.”
“But—”
“Irina, think of Budapest as one big consumer-goods store. Hungarian VCRs, Western jeans and pantyhose, real perfume. You will be the envy of your office at GUM,” he promised her.
“Well…”
“I thought so. My darling, we are going on vacation!” he told her, a little manly force in his voice.
“If you say so,” she responded, with the hint of an avaricious smile. “I will call in to the office later and let them know. I suppose they won’t miss me too, badly.”
“The only people they miss in Moscow are the Politburo members, and they only miss them for the day and a half it takes to replace them,” he announced.
And so that was settled. They were taking the train to Hungary. Irina started thinking about what to pack. Oleg would leave that to her. Inside a week or ten days, we will all have much better clothes, the KGB communications officer told himself. And maybe in a month or two, they would go to that Disney Planet place in the American province of Florida…
He wondered if CIA knew how much trust he was putting in them, and he prayed—an unusual activity for a KGB officer—that they would perform as well as he hoped.
“GOOD MORNING, JACK.”
“Hey, Simon. What’s new in the world?” Jack set his coffee down before taking his coat off.
“Suslov died last night,” Harding announced. “It will be in their afternoon papers.”
“What a pity. Another bat found his way back into hell, eh?” At least he died with good eyesight, thanks to Bernie Katz and the guys from Johns Hopkins, Ryan thought. “Complications of diabetes?”
Harding shrugged. “Plus being old, I should imagine. Heart attack, our sources tell us. Amazing that the nasty old bugger actually had a heart. In any case, his replacement will be Mikhail Yevgeniyevich Alexandrov.”
“And he’s not exactly a day at the beach. When will they plant Suslov?”
“He’s a senior Politburo member. I would expect a full state funeral, marching band, the lot, then cremation and a slot in the Kremlin wall.”
“You know, I’ve always wondered, what does a real communist think about when he knows he’s dying? You suppose they wonder if it was all a great big fucking mistake?”
“I have no idea. But Suslov was evidently a true believer. He probably thought of all the good he’d done in his life, leading humanity to the ‘Radiant Future’ they like to talk about.”
Nobody’s that dumb, Ryan wanted to retort, but Simon was probably right. Nothing lingered longer in a man’s mind than a bad idea, and certainly Red Mike had held his bad ideas close to whatever heart had finally cashed in. But a communist’s best-case scenario for after death corresponded with Ryan’s worst, and if the communist was wrong, then, quite literally, there was hell to pay. Tough luck, Mishka, hope you took some sunblock with you.
“Okay, what’s up for today?”
“The PM wants to know if this will have any effect on Politburo policy.”
“Tell her no, it won’t. In political terms, Alexandrov might as well be Suslov’s twin brother. He thinks Marx is God, and Lenin is his prophet, and Stalin was mostly right, just a little too nekulturniy in his application of political theory. The rest of the Politburo doesn’t really believe that stuff anymore, but they have to pretend that they do. So call Alexandrov the new conductor of the ideological symphony orchestra. They don’t much like the music anymore, but they dance to it anyway, ’cause it’s the only dance they know. I don’t think he will affect their policy decisions a dot. I bet they listen when he talks, but they let it go in one ear and out the other; they pretend to respect him, but they really don’t.”
“It’s a little more complex than that, but you’ve caught the essentials,” Harding agreed. “The thing is, I have to find a way to produce ten double-spaced pages that say it.”
“Yeah, in bureaucratese.” Ryan had never quite mastered that language, which was one of the reasons Admiral Greer liked him so much.
“We have our procedures, Jack, and the PM—indeed, all of the Prime Ministers—like to have it in words they understand.”
“The Iron Lady understands the same language as a stevedore, I bet.”
“Only when she speaks those words, Sir John, not when others try to speak them to her.”
“I suppose. Okay,” Ryan had to concede the point. “What documents do we need?”
“We have an extensive dossier file on Alexandrov. I’ve already called down for it.”
So this day would be occupied with creative writing, Ryan decided. It would have been more interesting to look into their economy, but instead he’d have to help do a prospective, analytical obituary for a man whom nobody had liked, and who’d probably died intestate anyway.
THE PREPARATION WAS even easier than he’d hoped. Haydock had expected the Russians to be pleased, and, sure enough, one call to his contact in the Ministry of Transportation had done the trick. At ten the next morning, he, Paul Matthews, and a Times photographer would be at the Kiev station to do a story about Soviet state rail and how it compared to British Rail, which needed some help, most Englishmen thought, especially in upper management.
Matthews probably suspected that Haydock was a “six” person, but had never let on, since the spook had been so helpful feeding stories to him. It was the usual way of creating a friendly journalist—even taught at the SIS Academy—but it was officially denied to the American CIA. The United States Congress passes the most remarkable and absurd laws to hamstring its intelligence services, the Brit thought, though he was sure the official rules were broken on a daily basis by the people in the field. He’d violated a few of the much looser rules of his own mother service. And had never been caught, of course. Just as he had never been caught working agents on the streets of Moscow…
HI, TONY. Ed Foley extended a friendly hand to the Moscow correspondent of The New York Times. He wondered if Prince knew how much Ed despised him. But it probably went both ways. “What’s happening today?”
“Looking for a statement by the Ambassador on the death of Mikhail Suslov.”
Foley laughed. “How about he’s glad the nasty old cocksucker is dead?”
“Can I quote you on that?” Prince held up his scribble pad.
Time to back up. “Not exactly. I have no instructions in that matter, Tony, and the boss is tied up on other things at the moment. No time loose to see you until later afternoon, I’m afraid.”
“Well, I need something, Ed.”
“‘Mikhail Suslov was an important member of the Politburo, and an important ideological force in this country, and we regret his untimely passing.’ That good enough?”
“Your first quote was better and a lot more truthful,” the Times correspondent observed.
“You ever meet him?”
Price nodded. “Couple of times, before and after the Hopkins docs worked on his eyes—”
“Is that for real? I mean, I heard a few stories about it, but nothing substantive.” Foley acted the words out.
Prince nodded again. “It was true enough. Glasses like Coke-bottle bottoms. Courtly gent, I thought. Well-mannered and all that, but there was a little ‘tough guy’ underneath. I guess he was the high priest of communism, like.”