"You wish us to prepare to receive Russian soldiers?"
"No. There is nothing we can do about them but get out of the way. Alexei, our soldiers are retreating and disorganized. A disorganized army is a mob. They will loot. They will pillage and they will rape. We must remove the valuable things, but we cannot give alarm to the rest of the people on the estate. We must prepare things in secret. The silver and the gold and the good porcelains must be hidden in carts."
At the time Alexei believed that somehow this was for the good of the estate. Days passed, days in which the peasants could have fortified themselves, could have been warned of the approaching mob. But no one was warned and because Alexei trusted the count, he did not even tell his mother. He packed the silver before dawn and packed the gold before the next dawn. He personally made lists and told other servants that their labor would not be needed. This they accepted readily as a chance to get out of work and they did not ask questions.
One night, the count himself awakened Alexei and ordered him to dress immediately and quietly for a long journey. The carriages and carts had been packed for days. "I must wake my mother, Your Excellency."
"Don't worry about her," said the count.
And Alexei, trusting the count implicitly, followed his orders. They left before dawn. When they stopped it was evening, and they were still on the estate. The count, as it was explained to everyone, was taking a little trip to Moscow to confer with the new government. The Czar had abdicated, a parliament was vainly trying to run things in Moscow, and the count was headed there to give what help he could. It seemed just like an ordinary journey with a few more carriages than necessary. When they stopped, Alexei looked for his mother. He had been assured, after all, that he was not to worry about her, therefore she must have been brought along.
He did not find her. But it was impossible he did not see her because his work around the carriages kept him so busy. On the second day he still could not find her, nor on the third.
By the fourth day, he realized she was not there, and asked to speak to the count.
"Your Excellency, you said that I should not worry about my mother. But I cannot find her in this caravan."
"Your mother? Your mother?"
"Yes, Your Excellency, Zemyatin. A maid on the second floor, Natasha. Somewhat heavy. Not very."
"I don't know. Why are you bothering me about this?"
"Because I do not see her. When you told me not to worry about her, I was so relieved I could have kissed your blessed hand."
"I don't know about her. Get back to the carriages," said the count. He had tents pitched by the side of the road for his nightly rest.
And then Alexei realized the count had meant she was not worth worrying about, not that she was safely protected. Only his years of training, that perfect control of a Russian servant under a ruthless master, kept him from screaming out his anger.
"Thank you, Your Excellency," he said simply, and bowed away. But outside the tent, he was determined to save his mother. He thought first of stealing a horse from one of the wagons and riding back. But a horse would be noticed. He thought of heading back on foot. But wild rumors already had hundreds of thousands of men looting the countryside. His mother, if she had time, would be smart enough to flee, in which case she wouldn't be at the estate. She might be hiding, in which case he might not be able to find her.
Without even comprehending what was going on, young Alexei Zemyatin was discovering his awesome talent for strategy and tactics. He realized that running hysterically back to the estate was no way to find his mother-indeed, he might be killed by the count, who feared anyone leaving him who knew about the treasure.
In Moscow, Alexei very simply separated the count from his gold by supposedly getting it onto the one train heading to the one open port heading toward the west: Murmansk. The gold crates, of course, were dummies. The count was also assured that Zemyatin would sit with the crates all the way from Moscow to Murmansk.
When the count told Alexei at the train station he would always have a job with him, Alexei knew his plan had worked. He kissed his master's hand and sent him off to a life of racking poverty with a perfect bow and a lie.
"I will be in the baggage cars with the crates," Alexei said.
He didn't bother to board but went to Lenin's Moscow headquarters. Even then Alexei knew he needed people to find his mother. The communists had them. They also had discipline and he had quite coldly calculated they were going to seize the government. They did not believe in democracy. They did not even believe in the proletariat. They believed in winning. That was all the former butler now believed in also.
The day before, he had devised the plan whereby the communists could steal the gold and silver most easily, and thus help finance their rebellion at this crucial time in their history. All he wanted, he said, was to serve the revolution. But he chose to serve in the party's young secret police organization as secretary to Lenin.
He was the only ore who had no background or belief in Marxist theory, and that quickly enabled him to become Lenin's confidant. His genius enabled him to become the Great One.
He never did find his mother. Millions died during those first cruel years. Famine spread throughout the land. Wars were fought inside Russia on several fronts, and when Alexei could finally spare the manpower for the search for his mother, the estate no longer existed. So brutal were the conditions that cannibalism reappeared in Russia for the first time in thousands of years.
A junior officer who knew of the search and Alexei's beginnings once asked him if he had planned his revenge of making Count Garbatov live in poverty to make up for his never finding his mother.
"Revenge?" he asked. He was puzzled by the word. No. There was never an idea of revenge. He had needed the gold and silver to help this new party seize power. He couldn't have cared less about Count Gorbatov. He never sought revenge, or even practiced cruelty. He was, in the hardest of times, the perfect butler, keeping emotions like hunger under control. He did what was necessary.
But shrewdly, he did not let the subordinate think he was above revenge. People who thought you might want to get even were less likely to cross you. Revenge was only worthwhile if you advertised it. The real target was never the person you punished, but the one who thought you might punish him.
Thus, many years later, with the world on the brink of destruction, when a young KGB colonel dispatching a kill team toward Hanoi mentioned that "now we will get him for what he did to us in London," Zemyatin did not discourage this stupidity. He absorbed the messages that made up the pre-kill picture, and asked a simple question.
"Why did they mention that he does not wear a wristwatch?"
"I imagine, Comrade Field Marshal Zemyatin, that San Gauta is a poor country, and most North Americans wear watches. This one did not. It was mentioned."
"Why didn't he wear a wristwatch?"
"I don't know," said the colonel, feeling perspiration form under the neck of his uniform.
"Let's find out. Maybe we can find out. Don't you wonder that here a person functions in the civilized world and does not wear a watch?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Zemyatin, "that it might behoove us to find out why he does not need to tell time, or whether he is able to tell time without a watch. It could even be that he has a watch hidden somewhere. I don't know. You don't know. Find out."
He did not bother to repeat that an enemy was perfect until he showed you how you could kill him. The young colonel would do as he was told. The young colonel would do exactly what he was told, because he believed that Zemyatin was cruel and ruthless, when the truth was the Great One was only ruthless. He did not trust the young colonel's word. He had never trusted anyone since the count. What he did trust was the colonel's fear.
But as he left the office, something akin to fear in himself emerged. It was not something that halted thought, or demanded that every body function be turned to its service. Rather, it was a question he was asking himself. When was this lone American going to show them all how to kill him?
On the flight to Hanoi on board a Swiss aircraft, Remo allowed himself five minutes' sleep. Kathy tried to make it four. Her hand was on his thigh.
"Have you ever done it in an airplane?" she whispered.
The lights were dim, and the other passengers were asleep. Remo hated the use of the word "it" for copulation. "It" seemed to represent copulation on every stupid car bumper that rolled along on American highways. Divers did "it" deeper. Bridge players did "it" with finesse, and horseback riders did "it" bareback.
"It?" said Remo.
"You know," whispered Kathy as her tongue touched his ear. She could have sworn his ear ducked.
"Yes, of course I know. And the answer is probably. I have done it on airplanes but with people I wanted to do it with."
"Do you find me unattractive?"
"No," he said. "You're beautiful."
"Don't you like women?"
"I like women. I just don't like people who use the word 'it' when they mean copulate."
"It's so unsexy to say 'copulate.' "
"Not to me. Try it," said Remo.