The Matarese Circle (45 page)

“I really don’t think this is necessary,” objected Vasili. “I expected to make my own arrangements—for both our sakes.”

“Whatever you might arrange, this is better; it will be daybreak soon and the roads are watched. You have nothing to worry about. The man you’re meeting has been on
Washington’s payroll for a long time.” The Finn smiled again. “He is second-in-command, KGB-Vyborg.”

Taleniekov returned the smile. Whatever annoyance he had felt evaporated. In one sentence his escort had provided the answers to several problems. If stealing from a thief was the safest form of larceny, a “defector” compromising a traitor was even safer.

“You’re a remarkable people,” he said to the Finn. “I’m sure we’ll do business again.”

“Why not? Geography keeps us occupied. We have scores to settle.”

Taleniekov had to ask. “Still? After so many years?”

“It never ends. You are fortunate, my friend, you don’t live with a wild, unpredictable bear in your backyard. Try it sometime, it’s depressing. Haven’t you heard? We drink too much.”

Vasili saw the car in the distance, a black shadow among other shadows surrounded by the snow on the road. It was dawn; in an hour the sun would throw its yellow shafts across the Arctic mists and the mists would disappear. As a child, he had been warmed by that sun.

He was home. It had been many years, but there was no sense of return, no joy at the prospect of seeing familiar sights, perhaps a familiar face … grown much older, as he had grown older.

There was no elation at all, only purpose. Too much had happened; he was cold and the winter sun would bring no warmth on this trip. There was only a family named Voroshin. He approached the car, staying as far to the right as possible, in the blind spot, his Graz-Burya in his gloved right hand. He stepped through the shoulder of snow, keeping his body low, until he was parallel with the front window. He raised his head and looked at the man inside.

The glow of a cigarette partially illuminated the vaguely familiar face. Taleniekov had seen it before, in a dossier photograph, or perhaps during a brief interview in Riga too insignificant to be remembered. He even remembered the man’s name, and that name triggered his memory of the facts.

Maletkin. Pietre Maletkin. From Grodro, just north of the Polish border. He was in his early fifties—the
face confirmed that—considered a sound if uninspired professional, someone who did his work quietly, by rote-efficiency, but with little else. Through seniority he had risen in the KGB, but his lack of initiative had relegated him to a post in Vyborg.

The Americans had made a perceptive choice in his recruitment. Here was a man doomed to insignificance by his own insignificance, yet privy to ciphers and schedules because of accumulated rank. A second-in-command at Vyborg knew the end of a rather inglorious road had been reached. Resentments could be played upon; promises of a richer life were powerful inducements. He could always be shot crossing the ice on a final trip to Vainikala. No one would miss him, a minor success for the Americans, a minor embarrassment to the KGB. But all that was changed now. Pietre Maletkin was about to become a very important person. He himself would know it the instant Vasili walked up to the window, for if the traitor’s face was vaguely familiar to Taleniekov, the “defector’s” would be completely known to Maletkin. Every KGB station in the world was after Vasili Vasilovich Taleniekov.

Sheltered by the bank of snow, he crept back some twenty meters behind the automobile, then walked out on the road. Maletkin was either deep in thought or half asleep; he gave no indication that he saw anyone, no turn of the head, no crushing out of the cigarette. It was not until Vasili was within ten feet of the window that the traitor jerked his shoulders around, his face turned to the glass. Taleniekov angled his head away as if checking the road behind him as he walked; he did not want his face seen until the window was rolled down. He stood directly by the door, his head hidden above the roof.

He heard the cranking of the handle, felt the brief swell of heat from inside the car. As he expected, the beam of a flashlight shot out from the seat; he bent over and showed his face, the Graz-Burya shoved through the open window.

“Good morning, Comrade Maletkin. It is Maletkin, isn’t it?”

“My
God! You!
”

With his left hand, Taleniekov reached in and held the flashlight, turning it slowly away, no urgency in the act. “Don’t upset yourself,” he said. “We have something
in common now, haven’t we? Why don’t you give me the keys?”

“What … 
what?
” Maletkin was paralyzed; he could not speak.

“Let me have the keys, please,” continued Vasili. “I’ll give them back to you as soon as I’m inside. You’re nervous, comrade, and nervous people do nervous things. I don’t want you driving away without me. The keys, please.”

The ominous barrel of the Graz-Burya was inches from Maletkin’s face, his eyes shifting rapidly between the gun and Taleniekov, he fumbled for the ignition switch and removed the keys. “Here,” he whispered.

“Thank you, comrade. And we are comrades, you know that, don’t you? There’d be no point in either of us trying to take advantage of the other’s predicament. We’d both lose.”

Taleniekov walked around the hood of the car, stepped through the snowbank, and climbed in the front seat beside the morose traitor.

“Come now, Colonel Maletkin—it is colonel by now, isn’t it?—there’s no reason for this hostility. I want to hear all the news.”

“I’m a temporary colonel; the rank has not been made permanent.”

“A shame. We never did appreciate you, did we? Well, we were certainly mistaken. Look what you’ve accomplished right under our noses. You must tell me how you did it. In Leningrad.”

“
Leningrad?
”

“A few hours’ ride from Zelenogorsk. It’s not so much, and I’m sure Vyborg’s second-in-command can come up with a reasonable explanation for the trip. I’ll help you. I’m very good at that sort of thing.”

Maletkin swallowed, his eyes apprehensively on Vasili. “I am to be back in Vyborg tomorrow morning. To hold a briefing with the patrols.”

“Delegate it, Colonel! Everyone loves to have responsibility delegated to them. It shows they’re appreciated.”

“It was delegated to me,” said Maletkin.

“See what I mean? By the way, where are
your
bank accounts? Norway? Sweden? New York? Certainly not in Finland; that would be foolish.”

“In the city of Atlanta. A bank owned by Arabs.”

“Good thinking.” Taleniekov handed him the keys. “Shall we get started, comrade?”

“This is
crazy,
” said Maletkin. “We’re dead men.”

“Not for a while. We have business in Leningrad.”

It was noon when they drove over the Kirov Bridge, past the summer gardens wrapped in burlap, and south to the enormous boulevard that was the Nevsky Prospeckt. Taleniekov fell silent as he looked out the window at the monuments of Leningrad. The blood of millions had been sacrificed to turn the freezing mud and marshland of the Neva River into Peter’s window-on-Europe.

They reached the end of the Prospeckt under the gleaming spire of the Admiralty Building and turned right into the Quay. There along the banks of the river stood the Winter Palace; its effect on Vasili was the same as it had always been. It made him think about the Russia that once had been and ended here.

There was no time for such reflections, nor was this the Leningrad he would roam for the next several days—although, ironically, it was
this
Leningrad,
that
Russia, that brought him here. Prince Andrei Voroshin had been part of both.

“Drive over the Anichov Bridge and turn left,” he said. “Head into the old housing development district. I’ll tell you where to stop.”

“What’s down there?” asked Maletkin, his apprehension growing with each block they traveled, each bridge they crossed, into the heart of the city.

“I’m surprised you don’t know; you should. A string of illegal boarding houses, and equally illegal cheap hotels that seem to have a collectively revisionist attitude regarding official papers.”

“In
Leningrad?
”

“You
don’t
know, do you?” said Taleniekov. “And no one ever told you. You
were
overlooked, comrade. When I was stationed in Riga, those of us who were area leaders frequently came up here and used the district for conferences we wished to keep secret, the ones that concerned our own people throughout the sector. It’s where I first heard your name, I believe.”

“
Me? I
was brought up?”

“Don’t worry, I threw them off and protected you. You and the other man in Vyborg.”

“
Vyborg?
” Maletkin lost his grip on the wheel; the car swerved, narrowly avoiding an oncoming truck.

“Control yourself!” Vasili shouted. “An accident would send us both to the black rooms of Lubyanka!”

“But Vyborg!” repeated the astonished traitor. “KGB-
Vyborg?
Do you know what you’re
saying?
”

“Precisely,” replied Taleniekov. “Two informers from the same source, neither aware of the other. It’s the most accurate way to verify information. But if one does learn about the other … well, he has the best of both worlds, wouldn’t you say? In your case, the advantages would be incalculable.”

“Who
is
he!?”

“Later, my friend, later. You cooperate fully with everything I ask and you’ll have his name when I leave.”

“Agreed,” said Maletkin, his composure returning.

Taleniekov leaned back in the seat as they progressed down the traffic-laden Sadovaya into the crowded streets of the old housing district, the
dom vashen.
The patina of clean pavements and sandblasted buildings concealed the mounting tensions rampant within the area. Two and three families living in a single flat, four and five people sleeping in a room; it would all explode one day.

Vasili glanced at the traitor beside him; he despised the man. Maletkin thought he was going to be given an advantage undreamed of only minutes before: the name of a high-ranking KGB intelligence officer from his own station, a traitor like himself, who could be manipulated unmercifully. He would do almost anything to get that name. It would be given to him—in three words, no other identification necessary. And, of course, it would be false. Pietre Maletkin would not be shot by the Americans crossing the ice to Vainikala, but instead in a barracks courtyard in Vyborg. So much for the politics of the insignificant man, thought Vasili, as he recognized the build-ng he was looking for down the street.

“Stop at the next corner, comrade,” he said. “Wait for me. If the person I want to see isn’t there, I’ll be right back. If he’s home, I’ll be an hour or so.” Maletkin pulled to the right behind a cluster of bicycles chained to a post on the curb. “Do remember,” Taleniekov continued, “that
you have two alternatives. You can race away to KGB headquarters—it’s on the Ligovsky Prospeckt, incidentally—and turn me in; that will lead to a chain of revelations which will result in your execution. Or you can wait for me, do as I ask you to do, and you will have bought yourself the identity of someone who can bring you present and future rewards. You’ll have your hook in a very important man.”

“Then I don’t really have a choice, do I?” said Maletkin. “I’ll be here.” The traitor grinned; he perspired on his chin and his teeth were yellow.

Taleniekov approached the stone steps of the building; it was a four-story structure with twenty to thirty flats, many crowded, but not hers. Lodzia Kronescha had her own apartment; that decision had been made by the KGB five years ago.

With the exception of a brief weekend conference fourteen months ago in Moscow, he had not seen her since Riga. During the conference they had spent one night together—the first night—but had decided not to meet subsequently, for professional reasons. The “brilliant Taleniekov” had been showing signs of strain, his oddly intemperate behavior annoying too many people—and too many people had been talking about it, whispering about it. Him. It was best they sever all associations outside the conference rooms. For in spite of total clearance, she was still being watched. He was not the sort of man she should be seen with; he had told her that, insisted upon it.

Five years ago Lodzia Kronescha had been in trouble; some said it was serious enough to remove her from her post in Leningrad. Others disagreed, claiming her lapses of judgment were due to a temporary siege of depression brought on by family problems. Besides, she was extremely effective in her work; whom would they get to replace her during those times of crisis? Lodzia was a ranking mathematician, a doctoral graduate from Moscow University, and trained in the Lenin Institute. She was among the most knowledgeable computer programmers in the field.

So she was kept on and given the proper warnings regarding her responsibility to the state—which had made her education possible. She was relegated to Night Operations,
Computer Division, KGB-Leningrad, Ligovsky Prospeckt. That was five years ago; she would remain there for at least another two.

Lodzia’s “crimes” might have been dismissed as professional errors—a series of minor mathematical variations—had it not been for a disturbing occurrence thirteen hundred miles away in Vienna. Her brother had been a senior air defense officer and he had committed suicide, the reasons for the act unexplained. Nevertheless, the air defense plans for the entire southwest German border had been altered. And Lodzia Kronescha had been called in for questioning.

Taleniekov had been present, intrigued by the quiet, academic woman brought in under the KGB lamps. He had been fascinated by her slow, thoughtful responses that were as convincing as they were lacking in panic. She had readily admitted that she adored her brother and was distressed to the point of a breakdown over his death and the manner of it. No, she had known of nothing irregular about his life; yes, he had been a devoted member of the party; no, she had not kept his correspondence—it had never occurred to her to do so.

Taleniekov had kept silent, knowing what he knew by instinct and a thousand encounters with concealed truth. She had been lying. From the beginning. But her lies were not rooted in treason, or even for her own survival. It was something else. When the daily KGB surveillance was called off, he had flown frequently to Leningrad from nearby Riga to institute his own.