By the time Yuri entered Victor Kazin’s office suite at the First Directorate headquarters he had studied his father’s dossier so closely that there were long tracts – particularly of the encounter with Panchenko set against the conflicting interview with the major – that he had memorized verbatim. So he was well prepared for the confrontation. And not just from his knowledge of the secret and unknown file: further prepared by the arduous and painstaking psychological instruction at those KGB training centres in Metrostroevskaya Street and Turnaninski Pereulok, always to be able to conceal his true feelings or emotions from anyone with whom he came into contact. There weren’t going to be any mistakes this afternoon: the determination somehow to expose Kazin and the security chief obsessed him to the exclusion of everything else. He just wished he could take that determination beyond more than an amorphous resolve.
Kazin remained seated, finding easy the reserve from superior to subordinate. He thought – as he had at the cemetery – how different the man was from his father. But only in appearance: once more Kazin reminded himself that this was the person directly responsible for what had occurred in Afghanistan. So he had to be just as devious and just as cunning. An enemy, like his father had been. Kazin said: ‘I would like to express my personal condolences over this tragic affair.’
There were several available chairs in the room but Kazin did not indicate any of them. Yuri acknowledged the refusal as demeaning but was unaffected by it: smallman behaviour, like the rezident’s similar stupidity in Kabul had been small-man behaviour. In direct contradiction to the intended effect, it gave Yuri a feeling of superiority. He said: ‘Thank you, Comrade First Deputy.’
‘He was a brilliant and much admired colleague,’ said Kazin. He wanted to protract his enjoyment of power over this helpless man he was going to destroy. A pawn, he thought, remembering his chess analogy: a sacrificial pawn to be played in an unbeatable game.
‘I appreciate your condolences,’ replied Yuri. What the hell was there behind this graveside summons! He tried to think of what the other man reminded him, strangely but obviously vibrating beneath the desk from what he guessed to be some nervous mannerism, that part that was visible above the table swarthily fat, chins puddled on chins, polished with sweat. A toad seemed somehow too trite but that was the impression Yuri had. How could his mother have done what she did!
‘I have studied your personal file. It is impressive.’
And the most impressive endorsement of all the commendation from an inquiry which got you censured, thought Yuri. It was a nonsensical remark for the man to have made: so he was sure of himself to the extent of open contempt. It was an important realization. Conscious before he spoke of the cant, Yuri said: ‘It is my hope always to be of service to the Committee for State Security.’
The younger man was a conceited, pedantic prig, concluded Kazin. It was almost going to be too easy; time to move you, little pawn. He said: ‘I have a function for you to fulfil.’
‘Which I will do to the best of my ability,’ responded Yuri, in apparent eagerness. It’s going to be more difficult to destroy me that it was my father, you bastard, he thought.
‘You replaced Yevgennie Pavlovich Levin at our mission to the United Nations?’ demanded Kazin.
‘Yes.’ said Yuri, intrigued. Even posed rhetorically it was a fatuous question.
‘The man is a traitor to his country,’ declared Kazin.
Yuri was unsure how to keep his side of the conversation going. ‘I understand that,’ he said. But little else so far.
‘I want him found,’ announced Kazin. But you detected first, he added, mentally. One little pawn exposed to the knights and kings of America’s counter-intelligence.
Yuri was well enough aware of the attitude towards defectors – there had been several warning lectures on retribution at Turnaninski Pereulok – but seeking out and punishing members of the service who went across to the West was not the responsibility of his department. Those who chased defectors were attached to that most secret of divisions, the Executive Action Department. Not to challenge would indicate his suspicion of the other man and at the moment his foreknowledge was the only protection he had. Cautiously Yuri said: ‘That would be a corrective assignment?’
‘It is a particular assignment with which you are being entrusted,’ said Kazin: the game plan did not allow any escape.
Necessary to protest further, decided Yuri: but clumsily. He said: ‘Throughout my training I was instructed to refrain from physical violence.’ Which was true and Kazin would know it: physical violence attracted attention, always the most essential thing to avoid.
Was this man really as devious and cunning as he suspected from the Afghanistan episode? It was difficult to believe from these responses. Kazin said: ‘I was not aware of any discussion of physical violence.’
‘I apologize, Comrade First Deputy, but I am having difficulty in understanding what it is you wish me to do,’ said Yuri. Would he be able to prolong this apparent briefing sufficiently to guess the tripwires, anticipate the trap? He had to try.
‘I wish you, with the ability which you have to move freely around the United States, to find where the Americans have hidden Yevgennie Levin,’ said Kazin, a teacher spelling out an instruction to a dull pupil. ‘Having done so, I want you to report directly to me.’
‘Having discovered the location, report directly back to you? Nothing more?’
Did the fool want it spelled out on paper in words that his lips could move, to follow! Kazin said: ‘Precisely that.
Your part in the operation will cease, from then on…’ He smiled patronizingly. ‘No physical violence.’
Maybe not exactly a tripwire, but an indication that they were being laid with some carelessness. What Kazin was ordering was still not something in which he should become involved, despite the apparent qualification. So the man was underestimating him. Good, thought Yuri. Time to attempt erecting hazards of his own. He said: ‘The Americans will have put Levin under deep cover.’
Frightened and apologizing in advance for failure, decided Kazin: a chance to frighten him further. He said: ‘I do not regard it as an easy assignment. Nor one, however, upon which I expect you to fail.’
‘There’d been enough assurances of dedication to the service, Yuri decided. Instead he said: ‘There will have been an investigation into Levin’s defection?’
‘Of course.’
‘It will be made available to me?’ As he asked the question, Yuri wondered suddenly and for the first time why – having destroyed his father as he was sure Kazin and Panchenko had – they had not carried out some search of Kutuzovsky Prospekt or the dacha, seeking any private, incriminating file the man might have maintained. That he might have done so would have been a reasonable surmise. And then Yuri remembered his own reaction that day, to his father’s revelation that he was copying official documents. To do such a thing was criminally forbidden by every regulation and edict governing the KGB. Not a reasonable surmise then, for men whose lives were constantly governed by those regulations and edicts.
In answer to Yuri’s question, Kazin patted the folders already laying on his desk and said: ‘Correspondence has also been permitted, between Levin and his daughter.’
‘There is a relation still in Russia?’
‘In Moscow.’
‘I should see her,’ said Yuri. It would have been a reaction the other man would expect.
Kazin touched the file again, ‘The address is here. Copies of all the letters, too.’
Yuri decided upon another snare. He said: ‘I am to communicate directly to you?’
‘Only to me: this is an absolutely restricted operation,’ said Kazin at once.
Kazin had become entangled in it, Yuri judged. The reply had been too quick, almost urgent, and the insistence meant the cutting out of Vladislav Belov, the Director of the American Department, through whom all traffic should normally have been channelled. Another inconsistency. No, corrected Yuri at once. Not at inconsistency. A further indication, if he needed one at all, that this was not the operation it was being made out to be. He said: ‘How is that communication to be conducted?’
‘Diplomatic bag,’ instructed Kazin.
Was there anything else upon which Kazin would snag himself? At once Yuri thought he saw a chance and said: ‘Regulations are that any communication in the diplomatic bag should be authorized and vetted by the on-base rezident… Comrade Granov, in my case.’
Kazin pressed down upon his twitching knee, unsure if he had been right in doubting the other man’s deviousness, realizing the implication of the question. He said: ‘I will issue special instructions to Comrade Granov in New York.’
So there would be some formal record that he was involved in a specific operation masterminded by the head of the First Chief Directorate, acknowledged Yuri. Insurance of a sort, he supposed. Against what? He decided to prod in a more positive direction. He said: ‘Has the driver involved in the accident with my father been found?’
No reason for apprehension, thought Kazin. They were absolutely safe. This was nothing more than a natural, predictable question. He said: ‘No. But I assure you he will be. The investigation has been taken over from the civilian militia by our own Directorate security.’
Re-introducing his father’s death into the conversation had been throwing a stone into a pool, hoping to make ripples, and Yuri decided there had been a tidal wave. Until that moment he had not known of any civilian involvement in the investigations into his father’s death. He said: ‘Thank you, for the assurance’ And for more, much more.
The man was definitely not as clever as he imagined himself to be, decided Kazin.
The man was definitely not as clever as he imagined himself to be, decided Yuri.
This time Kapalet chose Le Vivarois restaurant, taking as much care as he always did, remaining concealed in the Avenue Victor-Hugo until he saw the CIA man enter and waiting until Drew was seated before going in himself.
They went through the formality of ordering – Drew on this occasion impatiently selecting the wine – and as soon as the chevalier left the American said: ‘Well?’
‘It hasn’t been easy,’ avoided Kapalet.
Drew sighed at the accustomed bargaining, slipping the envelope into the Russian’s hand beneath the concealment of the table.
‘I managed to ask,’ said Kapalet, which he had, but from Moscow, not the reassigned Shelenkov.
‘And?’
‘He saw sometimes a man named Dolya, who acted as the courier to Moscow.’
‘What about the other name?’
The Russian nodded in affirmation. ‘Levin,’ he said. ‘From the UN mission as well. Performed as a cut-out, between New York and Washington.’
‘How many times?’
‘Four, as far as he could remember.’
Drew smiled, gesturing with his wine glass as if he were offering a toast. ‘You’ve done well, Sergei. You always do well.’
‘There’s something else,’ said Kapalet, as he had been specifically instructed by the head of the First Chief Directorate himself.
‘What?’
‘Levin’s defected, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Drew cautiously.
‘The order’s gone out,’ said Kapalet. ‘A general instruction to all rezidentura, in case you people move him abroad, but concentrated directly to America.’
‘What order?’
‘Levin’s to be traced,’ said Kapalet. ‘Traced and killed, as an example. As assassin has already been assigned in America.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t have a name,’ said Kapalet. ‘But you’d better take special care of Levin if you want to keep him alive.’