The Matarese Circle (46 page)

Vasili’s trailing of Lodzia had revealed what he then knew he would find. Extremely artful contacts in the parks of the Petrodvorets with an American agent out of Helsinki. The meetings were not sought, they had been forced upon her.

He had followed her to her flat one evening and had confronted her with his evidence. Instinct had told him to hold back official action. There was far less than treason in her activities.

“What I have done is
insignificant!
” she had cried, tears of exhaustion filling her eyes. “It is
nothing
compared to what they want! But they have proof of my doing
something;
they will not do what they threaten to do!”

The American had shown her photographs, dozens of
them, mostly of her brother, but also of other high-ranking Soviet officials in the Vienna sectors. They depicted the grossest obscenities, extremes of sexual behavior—male with female, and male with male—all taken while the subjects were drunk, all showing a Vienna of excessive debauchery in which responsible Soviet figures were willingly corrupted by any who cared to corrupt them.

The threat was simple: these photographs would be spread across the world. Her brother—as well as those superior to him in rank and stature—would be held up to universal ridicule. As would the Soviet Union.

“What did you hope to gain by doing what you did?” he had asked.

“Wear them out!” she had replied. “They will keep me on a string, never knowing what I will do, can do … have
done.
Every now and then they get word of computer errors. They are minor, but it is enough. They will not carry out their threats.”

“There is a better way,” he had suggested. “I think you should leave it to me. There’s a man in Washington who spent his fire in Southeast Asia, a general named Blackburn. Anthony Blackburn.”

Vasili had returned to Riga and sent out word through his network in London. Washington got the information within hours: whatever exploitation American intelligence cared to make out of Vienna would be matched by equally devastating exposure—and photographs—of one of the most respected men in the American military establishment.

No one from Helsinki ever bothered Lodzia Kronescha again. And she and Taleniekov became lovers.

As Vasili climbed the dark staircase to the second floor, memories came back to him. Theirs had been an affair of mutual need, without any feverish emotional attachment. They had been two insular people, dedicated to their professions almost to the exclusion of everything else; they had both required the release of mind and body. Neither had demanded more than that release from the other, and when he had been transferred to Sevastopol, their goodbyes were the painless parting of good friends who liked each other a great deal but who felt no dependency, grateful in fact for its absence. He
wondered what she would say when she saw him, what she would feel … what he would feel.

He looked at his watch: ten minutes to one. If her schedule had not been altered, she would have been relieved from duty at eight in the morning, arrived home by nine, read the papers for a half-hour and fallen asleep. Then a thought struck him. Suppose she had a lover? If so, he would not put her in danger; he would leave quickly before any identification was made. But he hoped it was not the case; he needed Lodzia. The man he had to reach in Leningrad could not be approached directly; she could help him—if she would.

He knocked on her door. Within seconds he heard the footsteps beyond, the sound of leather heels against hard wood. Oddly, she had not been in bed. The door opened halfway and Lodzia Kronescha stood there fully clothed—strangely clothed—in a bright-colored cotton dress, a
summer
dress, her light-brown hair falling over her shoulders, her sharp aquiline face set in a rigid expression, her hazel-green eyes staring at him—
staring
at him—as if his sudden appearance after so long were not so much unexpected as it was an intrusion.

“How nice of you to drop by, old friend,” she said without a trace of an inflection.

She was telling him something. There was someone inside with her. Someone waiting for him.

“It’s good to see you again, old friend,” said Taleniekov, nodding in acknowledgment, studying the crack between the door and the frame. He could see the cloth of a jacket, the brown fabric of a pair of trousers. There was only one man, she was telling him that, too. He pulled out his Graz-Burya, holding up his left hand, three fingers extended, gesturing to his left. On the third nod of his head, she was to drive to her right; her eyes told him she understood. “It’s been many months,” he continued casually. “I was in the district, so I thought I would …”

He gave the third nod; she lunged to her right. Vasili crashed his shoulder into the door—into the left panel, so the arc would be clean, the impact total—then battered it again, crushing the figure behind it into the wall.

He plunged inside, pivoting to the right, his shoulder smashing the door again. He ripped a gun out of the
man’s hand peeling the body away from the wall, hammering his knee into the exposed neck, propelling his would-be assailant off his feet into a nearby armchair where he collapsed on the floor.

“You
understood
,” cried Lodzia, crouching against the wall. “I was so worried that you wouldn’t!”

Taleniekov shut the door. “It’s not yet one o’clock,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

“I was hoping you’d realize that.”

“Also it’s freezing outside, hardly the season for a summer dress.”

“I knew you’d notice that. Most men don’t, but you would.”

He held her shoulders, speaking rapidly. “I’ve brought you terrible trouble. I’m sorry. I’ll leave immediately. Tear your clothes, say you tried to stop me. I’ll break into a flat upstairs and—”

“Vasili,
listen
to me! That man’s not one of us. He’s
not
KGB.”

Taleniekov turned toward the man on the floor. He was regaining consciousness slowly, trying to rise and orient himself at the same time. “Are you sure?”

“Very. To begin with he’s an Englishman, his Russian shouts with it When he mentioned your name I pretended to be shocked, angry that our people would think me capable of harboring a fugitive.… I said I wanted to telephone my superior. He refused to let me. He said ‘We have all we want from you.’ Those were his exact words.”

Vasili looked at her. “Would you have called your superior?”

“I’m not sure,” replied Lodzia, her hazel-green eyes steady on his. “I suppose it would have depended on what he said. It’s very difficult for me to believe you’re what they say you are.”

“I’m not. On the other hand, you must protect yourself.”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”

“Thank you … old friend.” Taleniekov turned back to the man on the floor and started toward him.

He saw it. He was too late!

Vasili lunged, diving at the figure by the chair, his hands
ripping at the man’s mouth, pulling it apart, his knee hammering the stomach, jamming it up into the rib cage, trying to induce vomit.

The acrid odor of almonds. Potassium cyanide. A massive dose. Oblivion in seconds, death in minutes.

The cold blue English eyes beneath him were wide and clear with satisfaction. The Matarese had escaped.

“We have to go over it
again
,” insisted Taleniekov, looking up from the naked corpse. They had stripped the body; Lodzia was sitting in a chair checking the articles of clothing meticulously for the second time. “Everything he said.”

“I’ve left out nothing. He wasn’t that talkative.”

“You’re a mathematician; we must fill in the missing numbers. The sums are clear.”

“Sums?”

“Yes, sums,” repeated Vasili, turning the corpse over. “He wanted me, but was willing to kill himself if the trap failed. That warrants two conclusions: first, he could not risk being taken alive because of what he knew. And second, he expected no assistance. If I thought otherwise, you and I would not be here now.”

“But why did he think you would come here to begin with?”

“Not would,” corrected Taleniekov. “
Might.
I’m sure it’s in a file somewhere in Moscow that you and I saw a lot of each other. And the men who want me have access to those files, I know that. But they’ll cover only the people here in Leningrad they think I
might
contact. They won’t bother with the sector leaders or the Ligovsky staff. If any of them got wind of me they’d send out alarms heard in Siberia; those who want me would step in then. No, they’ll only concern themselves with people they can’t trust to turn me in. You’re one of them.”

“Are there others? Here in Leningrad?”

“Three or four, perhaps. A Jew at the university, a good
friend I’d drink and argue with all night; he’ll be watched. Another at the Zhdanov, a political theorist who teaches Marx but is more at home with Adam Smith. One or two others, I suppose. I never really worried about whom I was seen with.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I know. My post had its advantages; there were a dozen explanations for any single thing I did, any person I saw.” He paused. “How extensive
is
their coverage?”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s one man I do want to reach. They’d have to go back a great many years to find him, but they may have.” Vasili paused again, his finger on the base of the spine of the naked body beneath him. He looked up at the strong yet curiously gentle face of the woman he had known so well. “What were the words again? ‘We have all we want from you.’ ”

“Yes. At which point he grabbed the telephone away from my hand.”

“He was convinced you were going to call headquarters?”

“I was convincing. Had he told me to go ahead, I might have changed tactics, I don’t know. Remember, I knew he was English. I didn’t think he would let me call. But he did not deny being KGB.”

“And later, when you put on the dress. He didn’t object?”

“On the contrary. It convinced him you were actually coming here, that I was cooperating.”

“What were his words, then? The precise words. You said he smiled and said something about women being all alike; you didn’t recall what else.”

“It was trivial.”

“Nothing is. Try to remember. Something about ‘whiling away the hours,’ that’s what you mentioned.”

“Yes. The language was ours but the phrase was very English, I remember that. He said he’d ‘while away the hours pleasantly’ … more so than the others. That there were … ‘no such sights on the Quay.’ I told you, he insisted I change clothes in front of him.”

“The ‘Quay.’ The Hermitage, Malachite Hall. There’s a woman there,” said Taleniekov, frowning. “They were thorough. One more missing number.”

“My lover was unfaithful?”

“Frequently, but not with her. She was an unreconstructed Tzarist put in charge of the architectural tours and perfectly delightful. She’s also closer to seventy than sixty, although neither seems so far away to me now. I took her to tea quite often.”

“That’s touching.”

“I enjoyed her company. She was a fine instructor in things I knew little about. Why would anyone have put her on a list in a file?”

“Speaking for Leningrad,” said Lodzia, amused, “if we saw our competition from Riga meeting with such a person, we’d insert it.”

“It’s probably as stupid as that. What else did he say?”

“Nothing memorable. While I was in my underwear, he made a foolish remark to the effect that mathematicians had the advantage over academics and librarians. We studied figures.…”

Taleniekov got to his feet. “That’s it,” he said. “The missing number. They’ve found him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Our Englishman either couldn’t resist the bad pun, or he was probing. The Quay—the Hermitage Museum. The academics—my drinking companions at the Zhdanov. The reference to a librarian—the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library. The man I want to reach is there.”

“Who is he?”

Vasili hesitated. “An old man who years ago befriended a young university student and opened his eyes to things he knew nothing about.”

“Who is he? Who is he?”

“I was a very confused young man,” Taleniekov said. “How was it possible for over three-quarters of the world to reject the teachings of the revolution? I could not accept the fact that so many millions were unenlightened. But that’s what the textbooks said, what our professors told us. But
why?
I had to understand how our enemies thought the way they did.”

“And this man was able to tell you?”

“He
showed
me. He let me find out for myself. I was sufficiently fluent in English and French then, reasonably
so in Spanish. He opened the doors, literally
opened
the steel doors, of the forbidden books—thousands of volumes Moscow disapproved of—and let me free with them. I spent weeks, months poring over them, trying to understand. It was there that the … ‘great Taleniekov’ … learned the most valuable lesson of all: how to see things as the enemy sees them, how to be able to
think
like him. That is the keystone of every success I’ve ever had. My old friend made it possible.”

“And you must reach him now?”

“Yes. He’s lived all his life here. He’s seen it all happen and he’s survived. If anyone can help me, he can.”

“What are you looking for? I think I have a right to know.”

“Of course you do, but it’s a name you must forget. At least, never mention it. I need information about a family named Voroshin.”

“A family? From Leningrad?”

“Yes.”

Lodzia shook her head in exasperation. “Sometimes I think the great Taleniekov is a great fool! I can run the name through our computers!”

“The minute you did, you’d be marked—for all purposes, dead. That man on the floor has accomplices everywhere.” He turned and walked back to the body, kneeling down to continue his examination of the corpse. “Besides, you’d find nothing; it’s too many years ago, too many changes of regimes and emphases. If any entry, or entries, had ever been made, I doubt they’d be there now. The irony is that if there was something in the data banks, it would probably mean the Voroshin family is no longer involved.”