Chiun had his new cell phone back out. He was clicking the mouthpiece open and closed.
"Fish swim, Russians scheme," the old man said as he played with the phone. "I would be shocked if she was not plotting against you in some way."
"Well, it's going to have to be long distance," Remo said, nodding firmly. "'Cause we're out of here. Let's go, Little Father."
The two men left the crowds and the submarine and headed off on foot to their hotel.
Chapter 22
When the knock sounded at his office door, Pavel Zatsyrko, head of Russia's intelligence services, sighed deeply. He checked his watch. Right on time.
The SVR head put down his pen and closed the file on which he had been making notes.
"Come in," he called with barely restrained irritation.
His secretary stuck her head in the room. Olga Chernovaya was an ugly, lumpish thing. The broken capillaries around her nose looked like a map of Moscow, she had prematurely gray hair as stiff as wire and her backside had gotten round from a lifetime's worth of government jobs.
"Your appointment is here," Olga snarled.
"Show her in," Zatsyrko said.
Too late. His appointment was already in. Even as the SVR director spoke, the woman he was scheduled to meet slipped around Olga and into the office.
When the beautiful woman appeared, the reason for Olga's disdain became clear. It had everything to do with envy and nothing to do with the fact that neither her employer nor her employer's guest had told Olga this important visitor's name.
With a look of hate-filled jealousy, Olga backed from the room and shut the door tight.
His visitor made certain they were alone before she turned full attention to Pavel Zatsyrko.
"I assume you dragged me all the way over here as some pathetic attempt to assert your masculinity," Anna Chutesov complained.
"Delighted to see you again, too," Zatsyrko droned.
He ordinarily stood when a woman-particularly a woman as beautiful as Anna Chutesov-entered a room. But for the director of the mysterious Institute, he didn't bother.
There was a time when he had acted more chivalrously toward her. It was a brief time back when he first met Director Chutesov and learned of the secret agency that had existed to offer advice to Russia's leaders since the days of the Soviet empire. The few times they met he had stood to greet her, tried to open doors, tried to be a gentleman. She rebuffed his chivalry with feminist insults. And, worse than rudeness, she began plundering his own agency of its best minds-always female-to work at her Institute.
Zatsyrko had been friends with the current president of Russia back when the two men worked together in the KGB. At first he had gone to his old comrade to complain about this nuisance Chutesov woman and her growing sapphic legion.
The president was less than supportive.
"Give her what she wants," Russia's leader grunted. "She has proved more useful to me and to Russia than all the agents in the SVR combined." Thus ended all argument.
And so Pavel Zatsyrko was forced to open the personnel files of Russia's premier intelligence service to a woman who would not allow someone to pull out her chair for her and who treated men as if they were ... well, women.
"You said you had information on the pictures I forwarded to you," Anna Chutesov said.
"Yes," Pavel Zatsyrko said. "I did."
There was a faint glimmer of satisfaction on his face as he got to his feet.
"Please come with me," the SVR head said. Zatsyrko did not hold the door for Anna as they left his office.
The upper floors of the SVR headquarters were like a library-people talking in hushed tones, practically tiptoeing from office to office. Zatsyrko led Anna through the quiet upper reaches of Russia's chief intelligence agency and to a dusty back hall and elevator, both of which had to be unlocked with special keys. The elevator carried them deep into the subbasement. The doors opened on a long, dingy corridor illuminated by fluorescent lights, many of which seemed on the verge of burning out.
Pavel Zatsyrko marched smartly down the hallway, past locked doors and steel cages stacked high with crates and cardboard packing boxes. As he walked, the SVR head hummed softly to himself.
He was enjoying wasting Anna's time. She refused to give him the satisfaction of showing her impatience. Mouth screwed tightly shut, Anna followed Zatsyrko to the far end of the hall. The SVR head led her into a small room.
There were no windows. Cold concrete was flaking from the walls onto the drab green floor. A single metal table and two old chairs sat in the middle of the room.
The back wall was lined with a dozen ancient metal file cabinets. Zatsyrko went to one of the cabinets. From a drawer he produced a pair of manila files.
The SVR head tossed the files onto the table. "Those will not leave this building," he said. "You may go over my head to the president if you wish, but tell him that if you take those files from the SVR building, he will have my resignation before you reach the curb."
Men never changed. They were always involved in some long-distance urinating contest to prove their virility. She ignored Zatsyrko's chest-thumping.
When she sat in a chair, the first thing she noted about the files were the old KGB codes on the flaps. Reverse Engineering Directorate had been typed in large Cyrillic lettering below the codes. There were smaller project code words on each flap. Anna scanned the file names.
Zibriruyushchiy Kostyum. Lyovkiy Dukh.
"These are not projects with which I am familiar," she said darkly.
"How interesting," Zatsyrko said. He was sitting across from her, arms folded. "We have finally found something that you do not know. I will be sure to mark my calendar."
As Zatsyrko watched, Anna read through the files thoroughly. She seemed to grow more amazed with every turned page. By the time she was done, the care lines around her blue eyes were crimped tight with concern.
"Is this information complete?" she demanded.
Pavel Zatsyrko seemed surprised. "I assumed you would ask me first if it was a joke. If this was the first time I was hearing about all this, that would be my reaction."
Anna shook her head impatiently. "The KGB was never known to joke," she spat. "Nor does the SVR have the skill to falsify records with this level of believable detail. Even if you could, you do not dislike me so much that you would waste your time on such foolishness. Therefore the only conclusion I can draw is that this information is real."
Like most men, Pavel Zatsyrko found that Anna Chutesov's logic was inarguable.
"That is everything except the personnel overview," he grunted. Getting up, he retrieved another file from the cabinet. He slipped it across the table. Anna flipped open the file.
She expected to find the usual dry details. The KGB collected information on everything from eating habits to shoe size. Wondering if Zatsyrko had given her this file to waste her time, she scanned the first page. It contained information about an old Soviet-era physicist.
When she checked the man's photograph, which was clipped to the back of the sheet, Anna's mouth tightened. She looked up angrily at Pavel Zatsyrko. Zatsyrko seemed pleased to have finally gotten a rise out of the Institute director.
"I thought you might find that interesting," he said.
Anna wasn't listening. She had clicked open her leather purse. She pulled out a small stack of photographs.
Thumbing through, she found one that she set next to the old KGB photo.