Atropos (8 page)

Norman stopped because the prodding had caused the old white man to move at last. He moved right out of the seat and slumped to the floor. That was when Norman saw the ice-pick handle sticking up from the man’s back.

T
HE DOOR TO APARTMENT
6B looked different from the others on this floor; it was cold when Trotter touched it. Metal. His old friend must be having a hard time adjusting to freedom.

Trotter rang the doorbell and waited. A peephole in the door opened, then clicked shut. Then followed a series of gliding, grating, and clicking noises as various locks and bolts were undone. Finally the door swung open.

The man in the doorway had aged since Trotter had seen him last. Age, which it had seemed would never touch him, had begun to caress him gently. There were lines around the eyes, now, and a touch of gray in his hair. He was still the handsomest man Trotter had ever seen.

“Come in, my friend. This
is
a surprise.” The man was smiling broadly. He seemed almost too happy over some unexpected company on a Wednesday afternoon. Then Trotter realized that a lot of the smile must be from relief. When a man is constantly expecting unknown dangers, a known one can be almost a comfort.

Trotter looked around while his host locked the door back up. A nice place, modern and roomy. There wasn’t a lot of personality to it, but Bulanin hadn’t been here very long yet. The only personal touches Trotter could see were the metal shutters on the insides of the windows, and the big gray desk with a word processor on it and papers scattered all over.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said. “Are you still Trotter?”

Trotter smiled in spite of himself. Bulanin had built a career on that charm. What the hell, he thought. “Call me Allan, Grigory Illyich.”

“Can I get you something to drink, Allan?”

“No, thanks. You seem to be settled in.”

“The work helps.” Bulanin had built himself some kind of clear drink in a very large glass. He sat down, pulled at it as if it were lemonade, and looked at Trotter as if daring him to make something of it.

This was new. Bulanin was an atypical Russian in many ways, and one of them was (or had been) that he had never been much of a drinker. He had had ambitions of someday ruling the Soviet Union. Maybe, Trotter thought, he no longer had any reason to keep his head clear.

Trotter had encountered Bulanin a few years ago in London. The Russian was the top KGB man there at the time, and in an attempt to score a coup that would boost his career, had backed a terrorist’s plan to kidnap the Congressman’s British counterpart. That had ended badly for Bulanin—if he hadn’t defected, his own people would have killed him. Painfully, as an example to others.

So Bulanin had come to the United States. He had been an invaluable source of information, so valuable that the Congressman had taken no chances on Bulanin’s former comrades finding him and taking him back home as a show monkey, or simply killing him. Bulanin had been interned in a compound in the Maryland mountains not far from Camp David. He’d all the comforts he could ask for, but he’d also had a cadre of grim Israelis for guards and a deadly electrified fence between him and any place the old man didn’t want him to go.

Bulanin had taken it calmly for a while, but then he started going stir-crazy. He began agitating for his release.

The way Trotter looked at it, they had already received full value from the man. Furthermore, during his confinement, he had learned nothing that could really hurt the Agency. And he did not dare go back to the Russians no matter how much he
might
have learned, because sooner or later, they would kill him. So when Trotter took over the Agency, the first thing he’d done was tell Bulanin he was free, as long as he let the Agency know where he was.

He’d sent Joe Albright to him with the news. As Joe reported it, there had been ten seconds of unbridled elation, followed by a growing concern. Bulanin hadn’t gone so far as to change his mind about being set loose, but he asked a few questions about how he was going to keep the KGB from liquidating him.

Trotter had passed word along that Bulanin was to make up a security plan for himself, and if it cost less than maintaining him for one year at the Maryland compound (which cost a fortune), the Agency would spring for it.

Bulanin had done that, and here he was. He had a new name, his first. That was an oddity in Trotter’s world, where names were like placemats—only good as long as they have nothing dripped on them. He had chosen to live in a small city in the shadow of a huge city. He had taken an apartment and turned it into a fortress.

He had even found a job for himself. He was a translator, Russian and French. The reports Trotter had checked before coming here said he was doing very well at it, almost doubling the subsidy the Agency paid him.

And he had started to drink heavily. Well, Trotter thought, he’s still wound up a lot better than most people in this business do.

Bulanin took another pull on his drink and smiled the charming smile again. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he asked.

Trotter took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to Bulanin. “Do you recognize any of these names?”

Bulanin looked it over quickly, then again more slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I do. Three of them.”

“All right,” Trotter said. “Don’t make me beg for it. Who? And in what connection.”

“Samuel Currus, Arnold Gillick, and Jacob Feder.”

“Gillick and Feder,” Trotter said.

“And Currus. They are all buggers.”

“I assume,” Trotter said, “that you are not using British slang.”

Bulanin laughed. “My friend, I sometimes think that if you had been Russian, or I American, we might have ruled the world together.”

“If that’s your idea of a good time,” Trotter said.

“It might be nice to try for a month or so,” Bulanin said. “But to answer your question, no, I was not using British slang. Though for all I know, any or all of these gentlemen might be buggers in that sense as well. No, what I was talking about was electronic surveillance and all that implies. When I was in the Washington KGB office, Currus, who lived in San Francisco, and Gillick, who lived in New York, I believe, were on a list of people who would do good work for the proper money, without asking from whom the money came. I myself never used them, but some of our people did.”

Trotter nodded. It made sense to use nationals of the target country for things like bugging, if you could find them, and save your own people for the absolutely most delicate cases. You never knew when one of your experts had been made by the opposition until you ran a lengthy and strenuous security check. And your own people were in for a tougher time if they were caught. They could do you more damage in that case, too.

“What about Feder?” Trotter wanted to know.

“He was—what is the phrase?—a must to avoid. He works for you people. Doesn’t he? At least for the U.S. government in some regard.”

“Do tell,” Trotter said dryly. His father was going to love hearing about this. You spend years congratulating yourself on how well a cover works, then you find out the opposition has been laying off your boy because they know he’s yours and they don’t want to make complications.

“Oh, yes,” Bulanin said. “The word was that he was the best in the business, too. He even had an open reputation in the private sector, and an enormous private income from it. That was another reason to leave him be, of course. If he was doing the espionage work for something other than money, he had to be a true patriot.”

“Patriot enough to be killed?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Feder’s dead. All the men on that list are dead.”

“Under suspicious circumstances, I presume. Or—”

“Or I wouldn’t be here, right. I had the research department up all night on this. Somebody is murdering electronic-surveillance experts. Does that make any sense to you?”

Bulanin frowned. “Not really. It would seem to me that the tape, or whatever else technology has come up with recently, could be expected to outlive the person who made it.”

“It seemed that way to me, too,” Trotter admitted. “But I thought I’d ask if your old firm had any plans along these lines.”

“No. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I was about to say that I respect your brain and ask you if you could make any sense out of it.”

Bulanin scowled. He looked at the glass of vodka in his hand as if he didn’t know how it got there. He raised it to his mouth and took a long pull, then scowled again.

“The only thing ...” he said. “But that doesn’t make any sense, either.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Well, if
one
of the names on that list had learned something he shouldn’t, or had betrayed the KGB in some way, they might well correct his manners. That was Borzov’s, you know. Borzov would never say ‘kill.’ Yes. They might correct his manners, and it occurred to me that it might occur to the KGB as a good idea to leave a few other bodies around as a smoke screen, but doing it this way would only draw an investigator’s attention to the skill that led to his association with my old firm in the first place.”

“It would be a much better smoke screen to sup a bomb on the guy’s bus and surround him with stiffs of a bunch of civilians.”

“Precisely,” Bulanin said.

Trotter rose. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, think about it, will you? You know how to get a message to me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What would you do, Grigory Illyich?”

“I would find a few such specialists as were still alive, question them closely, and provide protection, if I felt it necessary.”

Trotter looked at him and smiled. “Maybe we could have ruled the world, at that. I’ll let myself out. Take care of yourself.”

The Russian rose and shook his hand. “You too, my friend,” he said. “You, too.”

G
ENERAL BORZOV REACHED FOR
a fresh handkerchief from the stack on the upper right-hand corner of his desk. He brought it to his mouth and coughed into it. Then he opened it and looked at it. Disgusting. Truly. But he was under orders.

Borzov was not used to taking orders. This desk, this simple scarred piece of wood, had been the site of origin for some of the most important directives in the history of the Motherland. Borzov would never say such a thing himself, of course, but the trait that more than any other had made him who he was was his ability to accept facts. And the fact was, he was one of the most important men in the history of the Soviet Union, and therefore, of the world.

The fact that few people at home or abroad would ever know of his importance bothered him not at all. Borzov lived to serve his country as long as his country needed him.

And the time of the Motherland’s need of him had not yet passed. He had that from the Chairman’s own lips. Glasnost and Perestroika were all very good (in Borzov’s opinions, better than very good—
superb
as propaganda; tolerable as actual policies) but there would still be the need for the Menagerie Men.

Borzov smiled. It was his old ally-turned-adversary, the Congressman, who had coined that term, one cold night in 1943 in German-occupied Yugoslavia. Menagerie Men were war horses with the cunning of a fox, the courage of a lion, and the sting of a serpent. Borzov possessed all of those in full measure; until recently, he had also had the constitution of a bull. Now he was old. No—he had been old for a long time. Now he was old and infirm of body.
That
was the problem. That was what took getting used to.

And that was why he had submitted himself to the orders of someone other than the leader of the nation. To a mere colonel, a woman. Because Borzov had, of all things, a virus. It had kept him in bed for several days, until Comrade Colonel Doctor, who resembled an upright piano with a straight blond wig on top, had decided he would be more tranquil and recuperate better if she let him go back to work.

Tranquil. Borzov snorted just thinking of the word. He had a delicate mission under way, one that he had been preparing for the better part of two decades. It was vitally important. On the rare occasions Borzov allowed himself to daydream, it did not seem unreasonable to think of it as decisive. And it would all be decided in the fall, when the Americans chose their next President.

Once this operation could be successfully concluded, Borzov would be perfectly content to die. He would have left the Motherland in such a secure situation, that whatever young fool they chose to succeed him, said fool would be hard-pressed to ruin things.

So he did what the doctor told him, in order that he might live the required time. He made sure Madame Piano had the necessary information.

Such as the color of his phlegm.

General Borzov estimated that in person or through his subordinates, he had been responsible for the gathering of more information than any human being who had ever walked the earth. This information had been gathered through stealth and seduction and theft and extortion and assassination and torture, but none of that had
ever
been as distasteful to General Borzov as the constant monitoring of the color of his phlegm.

And now he had to cough again. Borzov took another handkerchief, coughed, looked. Grayish, he supposed. Yellowish-gray. Curse that doctor, anyway. What he ought to do was to parcel up the used handkerchiefs and send them to the doctor at the end of the day. Let
her
contemplate the color of his phlegm. He had more intriguing things to worry about.

Like the problem of who was killing the electronics experts. Indiscriminately. Some he had used, at least one the Congressman had used. Most of the dead men had never knowingly or unknowingly been involved in the operations of any government at all.

The Americans weren’t doing it. It didn’t feel like them at all, and Borzov’s great age was a testimonial to the wisdom of trusting his feelings. The GRU denied it was one of their operations. Borzov supposed he believed them. Though “Army Intelligence” was a contradiction in terms as far as Borzov was concerned, this indiscriminate killing seemed too much even for them.