Azrael Page 5

  He had asked a scientist about it once, a biologist. A brilliant man, but a dissident. A Jew. Borzov had asked him in the midst of an interrogation. The general had found that the occasional innocuous question could get more out of a suspect than a beating could. It was time for such a question, and Borzov had just gotten the sauna (from a store in Finland—all the luxury items enjoyed by ranking Soviet officials were imported from the West into Finland), which he enjoyed immensely, so he had asked.

  And the subject had explained, eagerly, grateful at last to be able to talk about something scientific, suspecting, perhaps, that he might never again get the chance. Once his mouth was open, he continued to talk, with only the mildest encouragement, and the friends who had been smuggling his anti-State lies to the West had been caught.

  Unfortunately, Borzov had forgotten the explanation. He could, he supposed, visit the asylum to which the scientist had been committed and have him explain again. The place was nearby, and follow-up interrogations, months or even years later, were frequently profitable.

  Borzov decided to let it go. He was an old man now. He looked down at his body, as well as he could see it without his eyeglasses. The skin that had once been red with health and covered heavy muscles was now white with grayish spots, hanging in folds where it didn’t cling like a thin coat of paint to tendons and bones, covering them but failing to hide them.

  And the bones moved so slowly now. It took the heat of the sauna to free them, melt them enough to get him through another day. He had thought of having another sauna installed in his headquarters, so that he could refresh himself at midday, but he had decided against it, settling for a simple shower stall. He had always set an example of Marxist austerity to his men. And he had never acknowledged a need of any sort, other than the needs of the State. A personal need was a weakness, and a man in Borzov’s position dared show no weakness. What power Borzov had, and he had a considerable amount, had been bought with fear. But power is just one by-product of fear. The other is hatred. Borzov had survived since the days of Stalin by never letting anyone forget the power long enough to give vent to the hatred. Chairmen came and went, cold war chased détente in an endless circle. Borzov stayed. Quiet but strong. Ever ready to serve the State.

  A buzzer rasped. It was time to leave the sauna. The general wrapped a towel around his middle and stepped out onto the tile floor. The Finns would now rush out into the snow and roll naked in it while other madmen beat them with boughs. General Borzov found a lukewarm shower cold enough. All he wanted was something to wash the sweat from him. He wanted to keep as much of the warmth in him as he could.

  Even in the days of the muscles, Dmitri Borzov’s full height hadn’t been impressive, but every morning he put on his uniform (and if Borzov was clothed at all, it was his uniform he was wearing), stood before the mirror and drew himself up to it. His spine protested, but yielded to the muscles that were left. The day it didn’t would be the day he retired.

  The black Chaika limousine was waiting in front of the building. The driver stood at attention near the rear door as exhaust fumes, cloud-white in the chill of Moscow’s early autumn, billowed around her legs. She saluted and held the door open.

  Borzov shook off a helping hand and got in. Normally, he would lean back and think. Many officials justified the need for a limousine by saying they worked on their papers in transit. Borzov had never asked for a limousine, and he carried no papers home with him. There was altogether too much committed to paper to please him. The Americans, the British, and those who worked for them could read what was written on papers. He worked during his morning ride, but he worked in the one place in the world he was sure the security was all in order—his own mind.

  He would repair to the comfort of it in a moment, but first he had to speak to the driver.

  “Your name, Comrade Sergeant,” he said.

  “Maria Malnikova, C-comrade General.”

  “Are you nervous?” he demanded.

  He had noted, not from interest but because he noticed everything, that while the sergeant was not an attractive woman, she had thick, lustrous yellow hair. She was needlessly pushing it down with one hand.

  “Keep your hands on the wheel,” he told her crossly, “and don’t be nervous.”

  “I-I’m not, Comrade General.”

  “Nonsense, your voice is trembling. They have told you all about Borzov the ogre, and you are afraid.” He didn’t give her a chance to deny it. “You shouldn’t be. It is not natural for you. Nervous women do not rise to your rank so young. How old are you?

  “Twenty-eight, Comrade General.”

  “Have you driven for me before?”

  “No, Comrade General. I have replaced Sergeant Brumel, who is to become an officer. To keep the rotation even.”

  “So I have not told you. Do you remember the War, Comrade Sergeant? No, of course, you couldn’t. It was over a decade before you were born. I formed many habits during the War. One was a respect for fuel. I learned to spill my lifeblood itself rather than waste gasoline, and a commitment that strong is not easily changed, even when the times do.

  “So, Comrade Sergeant, when the rotation selects you to drive for me again, turn the motor off while you wait for me. It pains me to see a car burning fuel without accomplishing anything.”

  “I will, Comrade General. I am sorry.”

  “You could not know; I had yet to tell you. No blame attaches.”

  “Thank you, Comrade General.”

  “Just remember what I have said. You drive very well.”

  Borzov could see her ears redden. He allowed himself a flash of amusement, then leaned back against the cushions and began to think.

  Chapter Two

  HIS THOUGHTS WERE DEVOTED to one project for the entire trip, but they did him little good. He was glad to feel the car stop (the sergeant switched off the engine when it did), letting him know he had arrived at Dzerzhinski Square. Borzov entered and went downstairs to his office.

  The office was another habit Borzov had formed during the War, working in a small, dark room many levels below the street. It had been a precaution against air raids. But he had come to like it. The basements of Lubyanka had been where the most strenuous interrogations had taken place, and when Borzov had something to do with them, it was convenient to have his office nearby, where he could go in peace to digest the results. He had steadfastly refused to move upstairs, and when the KGB built the branch headquarters, a modern monstrosity on a ring road skirting the capital, Borzov had nearly resigned.

  He needn’t have worried. Plenty of work was still done here. It was convenient to so many other organizations. And even with the advent of new techniques and new drugs, making interrogation just as profitable but with less physical labor, the basement rooms had not been entirely decommissioned.

  He went to his desk and called Communications for progress on the American newspaper operation. Only with his request would the reports be printed. An armed courier rushed them to the general’s office where he read, then destroyed, them. The whole procedure had taken less than three minutes, and the papers themselves had been in existence less than that. Borzov was pleased, as he always was when things went smoothly.

  Things were not going smoothly in America. The woman was being stubborn. She had been given warnings, and she had ignored them. There was no doubt the warnings had been received. The American madman—Azrael in coded dispatches, by his own choice—was perfection, as always. No one suspected that the children had been eliminated by anything but blind chance. Except that woman. She knew. And still she defied him.

  It made Borzov angry in the most fundamental way. It bothered him even more than the mysterious setbacks of recent years, the foiling of the Liz Fane kidnapping or the defection of Bulanin, Borzov’s top man in England. The Americans had been responsible for those in some way Borzov had yet to fully understand.

  He could, however, accept it. Even the greatest of chess masters lost from time to time.<
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  But this was different. This was as if he had spent hours developing a strategy, and just as he was about to put his opponent in check, his queen had tried to sneak off the board.

  Ordinarily, of course, someone who tried to ignore his assignment without at least having brains enough actually to defect would be doused, painfully, before becoming anything more than a minor annoyance.

  The times were not ordinary. Soviet-American relations were on the brink of entering a new phase, and that phase must be carefully shaped. American and Soviet officials had started a round of talks that would proceed, on and off, with cancellations for minor upsets or “spectacular” breakthroughs when the politics of one or the other of the countries demanded, for the next several years. But the talks themselves meant less than nothing. The real decisions would be made by the American people.

  Borzov sometimes wondered if the American people believed as much in the efficacy of American Democracy as he did. Because Borzov had known since the War that especially in matters of foreign policy, once most of the people were convinced on an issue, the government had no choice but to go along.

  The key to the mind of America was the press. The press controlled access to the people in America, the way the government did here. The press had gotten America into war with Spain; it had driven them from the war in Vietnam. It had toppled a president with scandal and undercut his successors with ridicule.

  Most of all, it hid the secret.

  The American media were full of Armageddon, Nuclear Holocaust, The End of the World. It had made offending the Soviet Union seem the act of a madman, as witness the editorials every time a president risked it.

  “We will bury you,” Khrushchev had said, and that slogan was imprinted daily, implicitly and explicitly, on the brain of every American who could read or turn a knob. And, it seemed, that imprinting took up so much of the American brain that the few who could see past it to the secret were scorned as warmongers and fools. Sometimes Borzov found himself wishing a God existed, so he might thank him.

  Borzov told himself the secret again, with a sense of wonder at the truth of it, and pride in the wisdom that had let him see it in time to hide it, and to build his nation’s policy around it.

  We do not dare bury them.

  We do not dare. Thirty-five percent of our population works to grow food, and it is not enough. The people rose against the Czar because they were hungry, but the Soviet people are not hungry. The Americans grew more food than they could eat (and the press afflicted their conscience with stories of the handful of “hungry”). Much of America’s surplus food found its way to the Soviet Union. If the Americans wouldn’t sell it to them directly, some ally of theirs would be delighted to serve as middleman.

  And the Army had a stranglehold on the economy, on research and development. They were ten years behind the Americans in computer technology, and what they had was the result of the work of Borzov’s field agents, or of Americans placing private enterprise ahead of patriotism.

  Where would the food come from if they “buried” the Americans? Where would the technology come from, belated as it was, if they ground the West under their heel?

  They needed the West. Borzov’s job was not to destroy America and her allies, but to control them. He wanted them to be healthy, but uneasy of mind. They must have the vigor to produce, but lack sufficient will to become a threat to the Soviet system.

  There were key events that pushed the balance one way or another. Years ago, Borzov and the late Chairman had devised a system that would give them the edge when some of those events came to be. Now was the time, and the woman was in place. But she refused to do her duty.

  It was time for a warning to land closer to home.

  The woman known as Petra Hudson was a Soviet spy, and it was time she realized she was expected to follow orders.

  Chapter Three

  “YOU DON’T ASK ENOUGH questions to pass as a reporter,” Regina Hudson said.

  “Where did you get that idea?” Trotter said.

  Regina smiled in spite of herself. She didn’t know what else this Trotter was good at, but he had a definite flair for snappy comebacks. The first thing he’d ever said to her was, “Don’t worry, I plan to carry out the assignment in my Undercover Man uniform, the green one with the epaulets.”

  And she had to admit she deserved it. But it had been a surprise. When Rines had gotten back in touch with her, he had gone on and on about how this Trotter was their top man, none better, tons of experience, she should have full confidence in him, how lucky he was available, just don’t forget about the strict secrecy.

  After all that, she’d been expecting—she wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. She knew that most real-life undercover men looked like the people they were mixing with, i.e. criminals or middle-level bureaucrats or whatever. On the other hand, Rines had made her expect some kind of cross between Sean Connery and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  The circumstances surrounding the meeting had added to the impression. No, she wouldn’t meet the man in Washington, too many people who were too savvy to shrug things off. It wouldn’t do for her to be spotted. They didn’t want their man linked with Washington. She tried to tell him it was ridiculous, but Rines had countered with two things—one, she had promised to do what they asked or call the whole thing off; and two, a year and a half ago she had lunch at a diner in Arlington, Virginia, with Congressman Peter Vitkins (D—Mo.), and it had appeared in Time, Newsweek, Worldwatch, and six hundred newspapers, many of them owned by the Hudson Group. None of which she could deny.

  “Where should we meet, then?” she asked.

  “New York,” Rines said.

  Regina had pointed out that there were numerous savvy people in New York, too. Rines had explained that they didn’t care if their man was linked with New York, and the reason became apparent when he explained the cover they were preparing. Their man would be a feature writer, and she would interview him over lunch and hire him to work on the Kirkester Chronicle. “Pay him the right amount to make it look good,” Rines advised.

  So the rendezvous had been set, not at a diner but not in the lobby of the Plaza, either. She met him at a place called Dosanko on Forty-fifth Street between Lexington and Third Avenues, one of a chain of Japanese-style noodle houses. Fortunately, they let her use a fork. The second thing Trotter had said to her was, “Someday I’ll teach you how to use chopsticks. If three billion Asians can learn how to do it, so can you. I’m talking because you don’t seem to be in the mood.”

  It wasn’t that so much as Regina’s not knowing what to say. After all the cloak-and-dagger, this mysterious Trotter had turned out to be a tall young man, bordering on the attractive, with dark hair and eyes. And he wore glasses. Real ones, too. Regina had made it a point to get a step behind him, stand on tiptoe, and look through the lenses. He needed them, all right. So much for fantasyland.

  They met as arranged, and the editor-in-chief of the Kirkester Chronicle had put out a hand and said, “You don’t look anything like I expected you to,” at which point he passed her the first snappy remark.

  She couldn’t hold it against him, though. All the lines were delivered with a smile that drained any possible venom from them. It was a very nice smile.

  If she hadn’t been told that Trotter was experienced and highly skilled, and all the other euphemisms people like Fenton Rines liked to use for dangerous, the thought would never have crossed her mind. Since the notion had been planted, though, she could see how this boyish charm and easy manner could be the most dangerous thing about him.

  Since she was supposed to be interviewing him, she decided to make it look good (something else Rines had urged her to do) and ask him a few questions, most of which he refused to answer. For instance, he wouldn’t tell her anything about his past, but he would tell her why.

  “You just take the background in the resume for the truth. If that’s all you know, you can’t get details confused and let something slip.
”

  “But I know you never worked for the Baltimore Sun.”

  “It’ll check out,” he told her. “If anybody checks.”

  “Why a feature writer?”

  “If you made me city editor, I’d be tied to a desk. If I were a regular reporter, I’d have to be turning in copy or the editor would get suspicious. As a features man, by the time anybody realizes I’m not doing any work, my real job could be done.”

  “Do you think it could be over that soon?”

  That was another question he wouldn’t answer.

  That had been Tuesday. She’d gone right from lunch to the airport and got home early that evening. She spent Wednesday kicking herself. What she had done was more or less to hire the FBI (or somebody the FBI could call on, which amounted to the same thing) the way she would a private detective agency. It hit her like a faceful of ice water. Concern for her mother, respect for Rines’s reputation, and (she had to face it) a certain amount of My-Family-Has-a-Fortune arrogance had led her into the folly of approaching them with something this tenuous in the first place. She had nothing but the bizarre phone call and her mother’s reaction, something no outsider could be blamed for chalking up to vapors or menopause.

  But if Regina had been a fool to ask, why had they gone along? If the FBI was seriously into this kind of thing, she had strolled into a great story, then immediately promised to wipe the whole thing off the record, no matter where it went. She tried to think of some way around it, some alternate path to the same facts, somebody she could quote, so that she could keep her word and still print the story.

  It would be completely ethical, she felt obligated to remind herself. Nothing Deep Throat had told Bob Woodward about Watergate had been on the record, for instance. Maybe the thing to do was to become a Deep Throat herself, for some other reporter, just tell him something was going on that ought to be looked into ...

  No. It wasn’t going to work. She’d let her instincts as a daughter override the ones she was supposed to have developed as a journalist. Her mother might be peeved if she found out Regina had gone behind her back about this Cronus business, but she would hit the ceiling if she found out her daughter had given a government man clear sailing to meddle in family business without even the possibility of exposure to keep him honest.