"Set another place."
"With knives and forks and everything?"
"Certainly. He is going to eat with us."
"I am not a boychik," said General Ivanovich, entering the apartment. "I am a general in the sword who protects the party and the people. I am forty-four years old, bodyguard."
"Do you want a saucer with your cup?" asked the old bodyguard.
"Set a whole place," came Zemyatin's voice.
"A whole place, big deal. A whole place for a pretty little boychik," said the old man, shuffling off to the kitchen.
While there were no grand Western furniture in this apartment as there was in the lush dachas outside the city for men of lesser rank than the Great One, there was enough radio and electronic machinery to staff the most advanced Russian outpost. Zemyatin always had to be informed. Otherwise, it was a simple apartment with a few books, a picture of a young woman, taken many years before, and pictures of her as she grew older. But there was that unkempt feeling in this bachelor apartment; those little things that women gave to the lives of men to create the weather of their lives was missing.
The dinner was boiled beef, potatoes, and a raw salad, with tea and sugar for dessert. The seasonings tasted like someone had just grabbed the first box off the shelf.
"I hate to tell you this," said General Ivanovich, "but we have had multi-analysis of the pictures, of the reports, of everything. We have not found a single flaw. We may be facing the one man who does not show you how to kill him."
"Eat your potatoes," said Zemyatin.
"But if you are not going to, don't mash them. He'll eat them tomorrow," said the bodyguard. "You wanted the saucer?"
"A full setting for the general," said Zemyatin.
"He may not even want tea," said the bodyguard.
"So he'll leave it," said Zemyatin.
" 'So he'll leave it,' " mimicked the bodyguard. "So I'll clean it up." He shuffled back from the bare table with the linoleum place mats into the kitchen.
"Ivan," said Zemyatin. "The reason I say we must assume that every enemy is perfect is that I am sure no one is perfect. All that has happened is that you have not found the American's flaw yet. So where, we must ask ourselves, have we been looking? This is crucial in our thinking-"
The bodyguard came back into the living room, brushing his shoulder into the conversation.
"Here is your cup. Here is your saucer," said the bodyguard. He banged the saucer down on the table.
"Thank you," said Zemyatin. "Now, Ivan, the world situation is this-"
"The glass on the saucer doesn't even have tea in it, but the pretty boychik has got himself a saucer. You want two saucers for the tea you don't have?"
"Give him tea," said Zemyatin.
"I am not sure about the tea," said General Ivanovich. "I would like to get on with this. We are dealing with a strange new element-"
"Take the tea," said Zemyatin.
"Tea," said General Ivanovich.
"He doesn't want tea. You made him take tea."
"I'll have the tea," said General Ivanovich. His bright, perfectly green uniform stood out like a shiny button in a rag factory compared to the old bathrobe Zemyatin wore, and the floppy trousers with the old lug of a pistol stuck in them that the bodyguard wore.
"Just because he tells you do to something, you don't have to do it. He pushed Russia around. Don't let him push you around."
"He is my commander," said General Ivanovich,
"Bully, bully, bully. We all get bullied by Alexei. Alexei the bully."
By the time the bodyguard got back with the steaming tea, Zemyatin had outlined the situation with brilliant simplicity. Unfortunately, the bodyguard wouldn't leave until General Ivanovich took at least one sip of the tea. It burned his tongue.
"He's not a Russian, Alexei," said the bodyguard, "He didn't put a sugar cube in his mouth."
"He's a new Russian."
"None of us are that new. He doesn't want the tea. Look."
"Would you mind if we defended Mother Russia in the midst of your dinner?" said Alexei.
"Every time you want needless saucers, we have got a national emergency," said the bodyguard.
"You are probably wondering why I keep him," said Zemyatin.
"No," said ivanovich, who was even now learning to think like the Great One. "Obviously he does the necessary things very well. You can within a doubt trust him to do certain things. In brief, sir, he does work."
"Good. Now, this killer they have. We don't know his flaw yet. All right. Good. Let's put that aside for just a moment. I don't care whether we kill him or not. A few men here or there does not matter."
"There is something else," Zemyatin continued. "The Americans have a weapon we are interested in."
"Would you identify it for me?"
"No," said Zemyatin. "But they were testing it in London, when this man appeared on the scene to snatch away our one lead to it. This extraordinary man. This man whom we don't know how to kill yet. Then he turns up in a South American country. Then he turns up in Hanoi. Why?"
General Ivanovich knew from the way the older man spoke that he was not supposed to answer this. "Because, as we gather from reports now coming in, he is looking for the same weapon."
"Is it possible they don't have the weapon? Maybe the British have the weapon."
"Logical, but we know everything the British have. We know all their layers of counterintelligence. Now I have told you more than I wanted about other departments. No matter. We must ask ourselves, why are they committing this weapon? As a deception?"
"If it were anyone other than the one I have seen," said Ivanovich, "I would say snatch him and get the information from him."
"What we are seeing on almost every level is an America far more cunning than we ever thought possible. Could I have misjudged, and is there another explanation for all this? I ask because we are approaching a point from where there is no return. A major decision awaits. It will be like a bullet that cannot be recalled. The world will never be the same. Our world. Their world. Never the same."
General Ivanovich thought a moment. "I'll tell you, sir, that before those pictures, before seeing what I have seen both through my own eyes and through the eyes of experts, I would have said yes, you are misjudging the Americans. I had never seen anything the Americans had done, outside of electronics, that would justify our respect."
"And now?"