The Falstaff Enigma (24 page)

Borskov sent his wife out, something she had done for years. She knew the routine and was accustomed to it. David looked for Austin as Nikolai downed a glass of vodka in the living room. David found the analyst in their bedroom. He was sitting in front of a tape machine identical to the one across from Sorovin's apartment and was busy taking notes as the reels hummed the conversations of the night before. David tapped his shoulder and Robert jumped in sudden fright, his head snapping in David's direction. He turned off the machine and removed the earphones.

"Oh shit, David.
Shut the door and shut it now," said Austin in English, his voice excited and near hysteria.

David closed the bedroom door.
"What is it?" he asked.

“This is no goddamn purge going on here. I heard the guy say it. He slipped and the Sorovin guy chastised him for it. Oh dear God no!”

"Who? What? What are you talking about?" David looked at the paper on which Austin was taking notes. It had notes scribbled in English with arrows pointing from one name to another, one concept to another. The notes formed a circle around the page and in the middle was the doodling of a mushroom cloud.
Nuclear extinction
.

"The guy who visited Sorovin.
He had a visitor around eleven o’clock last night and they talked for about fifteen minutes. The visitor said what he shouldn't have said and Sorovin told him not to make that mistake again, that they should only refer to it in code."

“Calm down, Robert. Take a deep breath and tell me what
you’re talking about.”

Austin breathed in and out two times, slowly. He resumed, calmer, more controlled.
"David, this is not a purge. Leonid Sorovin is working for a group who plan to overthrow the Soviet government."

Austin had to repeat the statement twice before David responded. "This is on the tape?"

"Yes, and I'm sure Borskov doesn’t realize it either."

"No, I think you are right." David walked to the window. "Damn it, damn it," he cursed under his breath.

"What happened this morning?" Austin asked.

"We didn't get him. He had been tipped off somehow and he killed Arkady in his escape."

Austin rested his forehead on his palm. "We have until July Fourth."

"What happens then?"

"The coup attempt."

"Where and how?"

"It doesn’t say. Bring in Borskov so we can tell him."

"Yes, I'm afraid we have no choice on that."

Margolis left the room and took the colonel aside to ask him if he cared if Nikolai were informed of any development in this enigma, no matter how profound. Borskov nodded, almost imperceptibly. David told both men to step into the room and the analyst immediately began the tape machine.

“… due to the success of the campaign, we will be able to move up the date."

"Who is left?"

"Only one: blue five."
There was silence for a few brief moments. "What's wrong? Did you forget the code already?"

“I …”

"Your incompetence may prove to be most undesirable, comrade. Or will you plead stupidity?" The man's words were biting and demeaning. It was obvious to everyone in the room that the voice belonged to Sorovin and that the killer had a weak-willed individual at his mercy.

Again there was silence, broken only by footsteps on a wooden floor. It was not clear who was producing the sounds.

"I do remember the code." The words were hesitant, meek. "What is the new date for 'October Day’?"

"About three more weeks." These words had come from a distance, another room. Sorovin had been the one w
ho had walked across the floor. The sound of footsteps could be heard again, this time growing louder as Sorovin returned to the room. "The date as of now is July Fourth. You will be notified at the right time." The voice had grown louder as the killer reentered the room.

"The American independence day?”

"You surprise me sometimes. Maybe there is hope for you." The man laughed openly. It was condescending.

"Why?"

"Mostly an opportunistic symbolism."

"Washington will quake when we are in control of the Kremlin."

"Silence!" shouted the killer. "You must be determined to play the fool. Stick to code words only. The room could be under audio surveillance."

"You check the room, don't you?"

"Daily. But there are ways of listening to conversations that even I don't know about."

Austin turned o
ff the machine. He looked at Anatoly Borskov and was shocked at what he saw.

The
colonel was shaking his bowed head and – far more disconcerting to the three others in the room – laughing. "It fits! I should have known. Now it makes sense. The whole picture suddenly brought into focus because of the misspeak of an idiot.” It had been a laughter only to release nervous tension.

"David, please h
ave a seat," Borskov continued. "Robert, you will take notes. We must make our plans and come to an agreement right here before we proceed. I must start by saying that both of you may leave now. Obviously, the nature of this game has changed fundamentally and therefore, while I want you both to stay, I cannot expect that you will."

Austin did not bother to look at David. He saw no open avenues save one, and any retreat had long been barred.
"I'm in it up to my neck, as we say in America. I will stay."

David Margolis stood and turned his back on the other men. He shuffled his feet slowly, headed nowhere.
The same questions ran through his mind, only this time amplified, the dangers suddenly increased by a factor of ten. An Israeli and an American involved in a plot to overthrow the Soviet government. Perfect pawns to initiate the next great cataclysm. But Borskov already had enough evidence to prove their involvement to the world. Photographs, tape recordings, fingerprints – undeniable proof. So why would Borskov show his hand by letting them find out what was really going to happen? It was the piece that didn't fit. If they were being used by the KGB colonel, he might be willing to sacrifice his own man but he would never have brought them out of the dark. Knowledge is strength and pawns are never informed of the King's master strategy.

"Yes,
Colonel," said the Mossad agent as he turned around, "we are both staying."

"Good," replied Borskov.
"Now we plan. Any thoughts as to our next move?"

"What about taking what we have to the Politburo?" Nikolai
asked.

"That is where we are headed," Borskov
replied, "but not until we have solid proof, which we are far from."

"Let me
summarize," interrupted Austin. The colonel nodded his approval. "We know that Leonid Sorovin heads up a team of killers that is highly skilled. We also know that this is not a purge he is conducting but rather he is laying the groundwork for a coup d’état. We can assume that he works for others who are the heads of this planned coup. Clearly, we have to find the leaders and find Sorovin again.

"As for the former,
Colonel, you are the key to that. You must prepare a list of hard-line generals and top Party members who you think are likely to be involved in the coup. Additionally, we will soon have the photographs of those who visited Sorovin and maybe a good fingerprint or two from his flat.

"As for the latter, the only link we have to Sorovin is Patriots' Park. I think we will have to go back, but this time we will go inside and look for his team. Of course, we will be very, very careful."

"Agreed," said Borskov. "We should start with a trip to Patriots' Park."

"Before we go rushing off, what about Politburo involvement?" interjected David, his question directed to the KGB
colonel.

"My guess is that there must be someone in the Kremlin who is
the leader,” Borskov replied. “All these killings certainly have not gone unnoticed inside the Kremlin, so I think there is someone very high up who is either a reassuring voice or who runs interference somehow to block any effective counteraction."

"The man behind this must be in the Politburo,"
David theorized. "Perhaps the defense minister." He was thinking aloud.

"I think that none of us is questioning your proposition, David," Borskov
said. "I must also say that no one in the Politburo can be immediately ruled out, including the general secretary himself. The Politburo as a bureaucracy has really grown larger than any one individual. In fact, there could be more than one man on the Politburo who is part of this. In my opinion, we will have to examine backgrounds and relationships. This we will do tonight."

"There is another,
more fundamental problem," David said. "Sorovin must have been tipped off when he received that telephone call shortly before we tried to take him. He could have been called by someone such as a hotel clerk who noticed us, or by a member of the assassination team who picked us up, or by someone more directly associated with us. If it was someone who knew who we are, then Sorovin knows you are after him."

"In which case," broke in the
colonel, "I will lose my position if the chairman of the KGB is affiliated with this group or I will be a target if not. I have thought of that, David, and I will try to be as careful and hasty as I can be. But right now, we will visit Patriots' Park."

As she made her way through the afternoon shopping crowds, a lane seemed to open in front of her. Men turned their heads to admire her form as women turned away in feigned disgust, their reactions unable to hide their envy. The woman was very attractive, and in a country where many women still wore scarves over their hair and dresses that buttoned to the neckline, she wore skintight Calvin Klein jeans and a loose shirt with the top three buttons unfastened, giving the young men hope for a cheap peek at her braless breasts. From the age of 15 she had been fully aware of the power she had, first exercising that power at 16 by sleeping with her married teacher to insure top grades in a physics course she would otherwise have failed.

Svetlana Borskov used what she had very well indeed – so well that her parents said nothing when at 18 she brought home a man who was 39 years old but looked older. He was shorter than she, already balding and slightly overweight, but he was on his way to power and prominence, a rising star
in the Committee for State Security – the KGB. And that meant the good life for their daughter, something she deserved. Why should she waste herself on just another farm boy, who would probably grow up to be an alcoholic and beat her? She was better than that, she was beautiful.

"Well, where
are you now?" thought Svetlana. “Why aren't you here to see all I have achieved?" She hated them. They never cared which bastard had his way with her, as long as he was powerful, or connected to the power elite. They used her to raise themselves out of their own miserable traps. And when she did it – when she married this slob who had no love for her, only love for power – they died. First her father. The doctors said it was from complications arising from an old war injury. Then her mother. Loneliness, they said. They were fools. Her parents died because they realized they couldn't get anything from their dear daughter. And she hated them all the more for leaving her.

As always, GUM department store was teeming with the masses. It was said to be the best supplied store in all of Russia and every Russian on a pilgrimage to Moscow view
ed a trip to GUM as sacrosanct. Svetlana was headed for the special section on the second floor, the section stocked with the finest champagne from Paris, wool sweaters from London and the latest in fashion from New York, the section reserved for top Party officials and their spouses – or their fortunate girlfriends.

The young woman who guarded the glass entrance picked Svetlana from the crowd while she was still a hundred feet away.
She was a regular and was known all around the Moscow social circles. It was said that her husband would be embarrassed to death if it weren't for his power. The girl at the entrance had never met him, but she had heard that he could order a man's disappearance if he wanted. She couldn't understand why anyone would risk having an affair with his wife. But many did, and as the woman approached, the girl could understand. The woman was said to be almost 40 years old, but the girl thought that had to be a lie, that she couldn't be older than 29. The girl would never know of Svetlana's visit to a Swiss plastic surgeon two years before. The young girl admired the woman.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Borskov."

"I know this man," Nikolai said.

The four men had spent two hours at Patriots' Park earlier during the day. According to the regular Army guards, there had been a special unit of commandos which had occupied a sealed-off area for the past four months. They acted on orders of the General Staff and came and went at odd hours. A truck had just gone out that morning at about 9 a
.m. Borskov had used his position to threaten the guards enough to let them into the sealed-off compound, which was a few acres separated from the rest of the base by a ten foot high wall.

The inside was barren except f
or buildings and a firing range. One building was a typical barracks, with bunks for twenty and a small kitchen. The other building had a storeroom and a conference room big enough to handle about thirty people. Everything else was gone. They had moved out that morning, leaving behind nothing. According to the base guards, the truck was a large three-ton vehicle which could carry up to twenty men with their related equipment. None of the guards had ever seen or talked to any of them, with the exception of Sorovin, and they could offer nothing new on him. Borskov had called in the same man who dusted Sorovin's apartment to collect all the prints he could get at Patriots' Park.

It was 10 in the evening and the fingerprints from the killer's flat h
ad been processed and analyzed. The KGB computer came up with nothing; all relevant fingerprints had been expunged. The assassin's network had a long reach and the colonel knew immediately that any prints retrieved from the buildings at Patriots' Park would be untraceable.

Too, they had received the photographs from the surveillance on Sorovin. And one of those photos had hit the subconscious of
a KGB agent named Nikolai. "I can't place the name, but I definitely know the face. Colonel, look at this." He handed the 10 cm x 7 cm photograph to Borskov.

"I don't recognize him." Colonel Borskov
gave the photo back to Nikolai. "Do you remember him recently or in the past?"

"
About a year ago, I think."

"KGB?"

Nikolai stared at the picture intently, trying desperately to bridge the gulf between the hard present and the fleeting images of the past. "Yes. Maybe." Faces from the past slowly edged into his conscious mind, each one triggering a new memory. "Colonel, name the major assignments of the past year that you remember."

"Well, there were many, but the big ones were the mission to find the Central Committee leak to the Western press, the KGB officer who was accused of rape, the false reports that were coming in from East German intelligence, the defection of
Petr Kirilenko, the …"

Nikolai snapped his fingers and then wiggl
ed his index finger in the air. "That's the one. In that mission I had to keep another colonel who worked for military intelligence informed of what I found through weekly meetings. This is that man. You even met him once at the start of the mission."

Bor
skov took the photograph again. He was terrible at remembering faces and even a direct link failed to jog his memory. Yet he usually remembered a name. "Colonel Savitsky. Yuri Savitsky. He is with the GRU."

"Now we have a solid lead.
The man in that photo is Colonel Yuri Savitsky," confirmed Nikolai.

"No,
marshal, everything will continue as planned. He is not a threat.”

"Not a threat!" screamed the
marshal, the full volume of his anger not adequately transferred over the telephone lines. "He tracked you down, watched you for three days and then almost captured you, and yet you say he is no threat! Frankly, commander, I view him as the only serious obstacle in our path."

"You must trust me, sir. He is very controllable until October Day, when we can deal with him appropriately. He has no other clues. We have already removed the files of all our men from the KGB central computer, and our men are in place on Dzerzhinsky Square, awaiting the word to take control. On the other hand, Borskov trusts only one man still alive
in the KGB and must rely on two Westerners who are operating outside of any sanction."

Leonid Sorovin wanted to hang up on the
marshal. He viewed the man's military skill with great respect, but when it came to internal security he was just another paranoid old man who viewed a letter complaining about the economy as an act of treason against the State punishable by death. It was ironic that this man was leading a coup against his own government. Ironic? No, patriotic. He would restore the country to greatness and spread the liberating power of the Socialist system throughout Europe. Throughout the world.

"Why should we wait?
Just kill him now." The marshal was gifted with a militarist's simplicity.

"No, sir.
We cannot be sure how his wife will react and the fact is that she has slept with three Politburo members and could gain access to them if she wanted."

"Kill them both."

"I can't. The only way to do it would be an all-out assault or bombing of his flat. It would be too obvious. Plus, I have limited resources and the plan as it stands now already needs all of my available assets."

"The whore!" Again, the
marshal was screaming. "Did you have her too?"

"No,
marshal."

The
marshal paused, regaining his composure. "Call me when you have finished with blue five."

"Yes, sir."

The Marshal hung up. He stood and walked to the window of his first floor office. The morning's sunlight streaked its way through the forest outside of  Minsk. He did not like this situation at all. He had been dealing with members of the Committee of State Security for over four decades and had grown to respect them, especially those who had risen to any prominence. They were ruthless politicians and usually unbending in their dogmatic pursuit of an assigned end. He considered ordering some of his own men to kill Anatoly Borskov. But he knew better. Sorovin had been flawless until now, and the marshal always stood by those who had proven their competence.

He turned from the window to stare at the map on the wall. It was a map of Europe, from the
Blasket Islands of Ireland to the Urals of his beloved motherland. Dashed red lines indicated the positions of four Soviet Army groups, known as military districts, massed along the borders of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, including his own Byelorussian Military District. Yet other Army groups occupied East Germany and the countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Dashed black lines showed the locations of the NATO forces in West Germany: the British in the North and the Americans concentrated around the Fulda Gap. Between the opposing armies – the diametrically opposed ideologies – were various arrows. All of them were in red.