“Well, we have patrols out every day, of course.”
It was the way he said it that bothered Bondarenko, and the Colonel made a mental note to check that out. “How far have we run?”
“Two kilometers.”
“The altitude does make things difficult. Come, we will walk back.”
The sunrise was spectacular. The blazing sphere edged above a nameless mountain to the east, and its light marched down the nearer slopes, chasing the shadows into the deep, glacial valleys. This installation was no easy objective, even for the inhuman barbarians of the mudjaheddin. The guard towers were well sited, with clear fields of fire that extended for several kilometers. They didn’t use searchlights out of consideration for the civilians who lived here, but night-vision devices were a better choice in any case, and he was sure that the KGB troops used those. And—he shrugged—site security wasn’t the reason he’d been sent down, though it was a fine excuse to needle the KGB security detail.
“May I ask how you obtained your exercise clothing?” the KGB officer asked when he was able to breathe properly.
“Are you a married man, Comrade Lieutenant?”
“Yes, I am, Comrade Colonel.”
“Personally, I do not question my wife on where she buys her birthday presents for me. Of course, I am not a chekist.” Bondarenko did a few deep knee-bends to show that he was, however, a better man.
“Colonel, while our duties are not quite the same, we both serve the Soviet Union. I am a young, inexperienced officer, as you have already made quite clear. One of the things that disturbs me is the unnecessary rivalry between the Army and the KGB.”
Bondarenko turned to look at the Lieutenant. “That was well said, my young Comrade. Perhaps when you wear general’s stars, you will remember the sentiment.”
He dropped the KGB Lieutenant back at the guard post and walked briskly back to the apartment block, the morning breeze threatening to freeze the sweat on his neck. He went inside and took the elevator up. Not surprisingly, there was no hot water for his shower this early in the morning. The Colonel endured it cold, chasing away the last vestiges of sleep, shaved and dressed before walking over to the canteen for breakfast.
He didn’t have to be at the Ministry until nine, and on the way was a steam bath. One of the things Filitov had learned over the years was that nothing could chase away a hangover and clear your head like steam. He’d had enough practice. His sergeant drove him to the Sandunovski Baths on Kuznetskiy Most, six blocks from the Kremlin. It was his usual Wednesday morning stop in any case. He was not alone, even this early. A handful of other probably important people trudged up the wide marble steps to the second floor’s first-class (not called that now, of course) facilities, since thousands of Moscovites shared with the Colonel both his disease and its cure. Some of them were women, and Misha wondered if the female facilities were very different from those he was about to use. It was strange. He’d been coming here since he joined the Ministry in 1943, and yet he’d never gotten a peek into the women’s section. Well, I am too old for that now.
His eyes were bloodshot and heavy as he undressed. Naked, he took a heavy bath towel from the pile at the end of the room, and a handful of birch branches. Filitov breathed the cool, dry air of the dressing room before opening the door that led to the steam rooms. The once-marble floor was largely replaced now with orange tiles. He could remember when the original floor had been nearly intact.
Two men in their fifties were arguing about something, probably politics. He could hear their rasping voices above the hiss of steam coming off the hotbox that occupied the center of the room. Misha counted five other men, their heads stooped over, each of them enduring a hangover in grumpy solitude. He selected a seat in the front row, and sat.
“Good morning, Comrade Colonel,” a voice said from five meters away.
“And to you, Comrade Academician,” Misha greeted his fellow regular. His hands were wrapped tightly around his bundle of branches while he waited for the sweat to begin. It didn’t take long—the room temperature was nearly one hundred forty degrees Fahrenheit. He breathed carefully, as the experienced ones did. The aspirins he’d taken with his morning tea were beginning to work, though his head was still heavy and the sinuses around his eyes swollen. He swatted the branches across his back, as though to exorcize the poisons from his body.
“And how is the Hero of Stalingrad this morning?” the academic persisted.
“About as well as the genius of the Ministry of Education.” This drew a painful laugh. Misha never could remember his name . . . Ilya Vladimirovich Somethingorother. What sort of fool could laugh during a hangover? The man drank because of his wife, he said. You drink to be free of her, do you? You boast of the times you’ve fucked your secretary, when I would trade my soul for one more look at Elena’s face. And my sons’ faces, he told himself. My two handsome sons. It was well to remember these things on such mornings.
“Yesterday’s Pravda spoke of the arms negotiations,” the man persisted. “Is there hope for progress?”
“I have no idea,” Misha replied.
An attendant came in. A young man, perhaps twenty-five or so and short. He counted heads in the room.
“Does anyone wish a drink?” he asked. Drinking was absolutely forbidden in the baths, but as any true Russian would say, that merely made the vodka taste better.
“No!” came the reply in chorus. No one was the least interested in the hair of the dog this morning, Misha noted with mild surprise. Well, it was the middle of the week. On a Saturday morning it would be very different.
“Very well,” the attendant said on the way out the door. “There will be fresh towels outside, and the pool heater has been repaired. Swimming is also fine exercise, Comrades. Remember to use the muscles that you are now baking, and you will be refreshed all day.”
Misha looked up. So this is the new one.
“Why do they have to be so damned cheerful?” asked a man in the corner.
“He is cheerful because he is not a foolish old drunk!” another answered. That drew a few chuckles.
“Five years ago vodka didn’t do this to me. I tell you, quality control is not what it used to be,” the first went on.
“Neither is your liver, Comrade!”
“A terrible thing to get old.” Misha turned around to see who said that. It was a man barely fifty, whose swollen belly was the color of dead fish and who smoked a cigarette, also in violation of the rules.
“A more terrible thing not to, but you young men have forgotten that!” he said automatically, and wondered why. Heads came up and saw the burn scars on his back and chest. Even those who did not know who Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov was knew that this was not a man to be trifled with. He sat quietly for another ten minutes before leaving.
The attendant was outside the door when he emerged. The Colonel handed over his branches and towel, then walked off to the cold-water showers. Ten minutes later he was a new man, the pain and depression of the vodka gone, and the strain behind him. He dressed quickly and walked downstairs to where his car was waiting. His sergeant noted the change in his stride and wondered what was so curative about roasting yourself like a piece of meat.
The attendant had his own task. On asking again a few minutes later, it turned out that two people in the steam room had changed their minds. He trotted out the building’s back door to a small shop whose manager made more money selling drink “on the left” than he did by dry-cleaning. The attendant returned with a half-liter bottle of “Vodka”—it had no brand name as such; the premium Stolychnaya was made for export and the elite—at a little over double the market price. The imposition of sales restrictions on alcohol had begun a whole new—and extremely profitable—part of the city’s black market. The attendant had also passed along a small film cassette that his contact had handed over with the birch branches. For his part, the bath attendant was also relieved. This was his only contact. He didn’t know the man’s name, and had spoken the code phrase with the natural fear that this part of the CIA’s Moscow network had long since been compromised by the KGB’s counter-intelligence department, the dreaded Second Chief Directorate. His life was already forfeit and he knew it. But he had to do something. Ever since his year in Afghanistan, the things he’d seen, and the things he’d been forced to do. He wondered briefly who that scarred old man was, but reminded himself that the man’s nature and identity were not his concern.