The Matarese Circle (48 page)

The strategy had the expected effect on the woman following Mikovsky. She interpreted the old man’s actions as those of a subject aware that he might be under surveillance, a subject unschooled in methods of evasion but also old and frightened and capable of creating an uncontrollable situation. So the woman in the brown overcoat and visored cap kept her distance, staying in shadows, going from darkened storefront to dimly lit alleyways, propelled into agitation herself by the unpredictability of her subject.

The old scholar started on his return pattern to the library. Vasili and Maletkin watched from a vantage point seventy-five meters away. Taleniekov studied the route directly across the wide avenue; there were two alleyways, both of which would be used by the woman as Mikovsky passed her on the way back.

“Come along,” ordered Vasili, grabbing Maletkin’s arm,
pushing him forward. “We’ll get behind him in the crowd on the other side. She’ll turn away as he goes by, and when he passes that second alleyway, she’ll use it.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because she used it before; it’s the natural thing to do. I’d use it.
We
will use it now.”

“How?”

“I’ll tell you when we’re in position.”

The moment was drawing near and Taleniekov could feel the drumlike beat in his chest. He had orchestrated the events of the past sixteen minutes, the next few would determine whether the orchestration had merit. He knew two indisputable facts: one, the woman would recognize him instantly; she would have been provided with photographs and a detailed physical description. Two, should the violence go against her, she would take her own life as quickly and as efficiently as the Englishman had done in Lodzia’s flat.

Timing and shock were the only tools at his immediate disposal. He would provide the first, the traitor from Vyborg the second.

They crossed the square with a group of pedestrians and walked into the crowds in front of the Kirov Theatre. Vasili glanced over his shoulder and saw Mikovsky weave his way awkwardly through the line forming for tickets, breathing with difficulty.

“Listen to me and do exactly as I say,” said Taleniekov, holding Maletkin’s arm. “Repeat the words I say to you.…”

They entered the flow of pedestrians walking up the pavement, remaining behind a quartet of soldiers, their bulky overcoats serving as a wall Vasili could see beyond at will. The scholar up ahead approached the first alleyway; the woman briefly disappeared into it, then reemerged as he passed.

Moments now. Only moments.

The second alleyway. Mikovsky was in front of it, the woman within.

“
Now!
” Vasili ordered, rushing with Maletkin toward the entrance.

He heard the words Maletkin shouted so they would be unmistakable above the noise of the streets.

“Comrade, wait. Stop!
Circolo! Nostro circolo!
”

Silence. The shock was almost total.

“Who
are
you?” The question was asked in a cold, tense voice.

“Stop everything! I have news from the shepherd!”

“
What?
”

The shock was now complete.

Taleniekov spun around the corner of the alley, rushing toward the woman, his hands two springs uncoiling as he lunged. He grabbed her arms, his fingers sliding instantly down to her wrists, immobilizing her hands, one of which was in her overcoat pocket, gripped around a gun. She recoiled, spinning to her left, her weight dead, pulling him forward, then sprang to her right, her left foot lashing up into him, close to her body like an enraged cat’s claw repelling another animal.

He countered, attacking directly, lifting her off her feet, crashing her writhing body into the alleyway wall, pummeling her with his shoulder, crushing her into the brick.

It happened so fast he was only vaguely aware of what she was doing until he felt her teeth sinking into the flesh of his neck. She had thrust her face into his—a move so unexpected he could only twist away in pain. Her mouth was wide, her red lips parted grotesquely. The bite was vicious, her jaws two clamps vicing into the side of his neck. He could feel blood drenching his collar; she
would not let go!
The pain was excruciating; the harder he battered her into the wall, the deeper her teeth went into his flesh. He
could not stand it.
He released her arms, his hands clawing at her face, pulling her from him.

The explosion was loud, distinct, yet muffled by the heavy cloth of her overcoat, the echo carried on the wind throughout the alley; she fell away from him, limp against the stone.

He looked at her face; her eyes were wide and dead; she sank slowly to the pavement. She had done precisely what she had been programmed to do: she had appraised the odds—two men against herself—and fired the weapon in her pocket, blowing away her chest.

“She’s
dead!
My God, she
killed
herself!” screamed Maletkin. “The
shot,
people will have heard it! We’ve got to run! The police!”

Several curious passersby stood motionless at the alley’s entrance, peering in.

“Be quiet!” commanded Taleniekov. “If anyone comes in use your KGB card. This is official business; no one’s permitted here. I want thirty seconds.”

Vasili pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it against his neck, reducing the flow of blood. He knelt over the body of the dead woman. With his right hand, he ripped the coat away, exposing a blouse stained everywhere with red. He tore the drenched fabric away from the skin; the hole below her left breast was massive, tissue and intestines clogging the opening. He probed the flesh around the wound; the light was too dim. He took out his cigarette lighter.

He snapped it, stretching the bloody skin beneath the breast, holding the light inches above it; the flame danced in the wind.

“For God’s sake,
hurry!
” Maletkin stood several feet away, his voice a panicked whisper. “What are you
doing?
”

Taleniekov did not reply. Instead, he moved his fingers around the flesh, wiping away the blood to see more clearly.

He found it. In the crease beneath the left breast, angled toward the center of the chest. A jagged circle of blue surrounded by white skin streaked with red. A blemish that was no blemish at all, but the mark of an incredible army.

The Matarese circle.

They walked rapidly out of the far end of the alley, melting into the crowds heading north. Maletkin was trembling, his face ashen. Vasili’s right hand gripped the traitor’s elbow, controlling the panic that might easily cause Maletkin to burst into a run, riveting attention on both of them. Taleniekov needed the man from Vyborg; a cable had to be sent that would elude KGB interception and Maletkin could send it. He realized that he had very little time to work out the cipher for Scofield. It would take old Mikovsky another ten minutes before he reached
his office, but soon after that Vasili knew he should be there. A frightened old man could say the wrong things to the wrong people.

Taleniekov held the handkerchief against the wound on his neck. The bleeding had ebbed to a trickle in the cold, it would stop sufficiently for a bandage soon; it occurred to Vasili to buy a high-necked sweater to conceal it.

“Slow down!” he ordered, yanking Maletkin’s elbow. “There’s a café up ahead. We’ll go inside for a few minutes, get a drink.”

“I could
use
one,” whispered Maletkin. “My God, she
killed
herself! Who
was
she?”

“Someone who made a mistake. Don’t you make another.”

The café was crowded; they shared a table with two middle-aged women, who objected to the intrusion and morosely kept to themselves; it was a splendid arrangement.

“Go up to the manager by the door,” said Taleniekov. “Tell him your friend had too much to drink and cut himself. Ask for a bandage and some adhesive.” Maletkin started to object; Vasili reached for his forearm. “Just do it. It’s nothing unusual in a place like this.”

The traitor got up and made his way to the man at the door. Taleniekov refolded the handkerchief, pressing the cleaner side against the torn skin, and dug into his pocket for a pencil. He moved the coarse paper napkin in front of him and began selecting the cipher for Beowulf Agate.

His mind closed out all noise, as he concentrated on an alphabet and a progression of numbers. Even as Maletkin returned with a cotton bandage and a small roll of tape, Vasili wrote, crossing out errors as rapidly as he made them. Their drinks arrived; the traitor had ordered three apiece. Taleniekov kept writing.

Eight minutes later he was finished. He tore the napkin in two and copied the wording in large unmistakable letters. He handed it to Maletkin. “I want this cable sent to Helsinki, to the name and hotel listed on top. I want it routed on a white line, commercial traffic, not subject to duplicate interception.”

The traitor’s eyes grew wide. “How do you expect
me
to do that?”

“The same way you get information to our friends in
Washington. You know the unmonitored schedules; we all protect ourselves from ourselves. It’s one of our more finely honed talents.”

“That’s through
Stockholm.
We bypass Helsinki!” Maletkin flushed; his state of agitation and the rapid infusion of alcohol had made him careless. He had not meant to reveal the Swedish connection. It wasn’t done, even among fellow defectors.

Nor could Vasili use Stockholm. The cable would then be under American scrutiny. There was another way.

“How often do you come down here to the Ligovski headquarters for sector conferences?”

The traitor pursed his lips in embarrassment. “Not often. Perhaps three or four times during the past year.”

“You’re going over there now,” said Taleniekov.

“I’m
what?
You’ve lost your head!”

“You’ll lose yours if you don’t. Don’t worry, Colonel. Rank still has its privileges and its effect. You are sending an urgent cable to a Vyborg man in Helsinki. White line, nonduplicated traffic. However, you must bring me a verifying copy.”

“Suppose they
check
with Vyborg?”

“Who on duty up there now would interfere with the second-in-command?”

Maletkin frowned nervously. “There will be questions later.”

Vasili smiled, the promise of untold riches in his voice. “Take my word for it, Colonel. When you return to Vyborg there won’t be anything you cannot have … or command.”

The traitor grinned, the sweat on his chin glistening. “Where do I bring the verifying copy? Where will we meet? When?”

Taleniekov held the bandage in place over the wound on his neck and unrolled a strip of tape, the end in his teeth. “Tear it,” he said to Maletkin. It was done and Vasili applied it, ripping off another strip as he spoke. “Stay the night at the Evropeiskaya Hotel on Brodsky Street. I’ll contact you there.”

“They’ll demand identification.”

“By all means, give it to them. A colonel of the KGB will no doubt get a better room. A better woman, too, if you go down to the lounge.”

“Both cost money.”

“My treat,” Taleniekov said.

It was the dinner hour. The huge reading rooms of the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library with their tapestried walls and the enormously high ceilings were nowhere near as crowded as usual. A scattering of students sat at the long tables, a few groups of tourists strolled about studying the tapestries and the oil paintings, speaking in hushed whispers, awed by the grandeur that was the Shchedrin.

As Vasili walked through the marble hallways toward the complex of offices in the west wing he remembered the months he had spent in these rooms—that room—awakening his mind to a world he had known so little about. He had not exaggerated to Lodzia; it was here, through the enlightened courage of one man, that he had learned more about the enemy than in all the training he had later received in Moscow and Novgorod.

The Saltykov-Shchedrin was his finest school, the man he was about to see after so many years his most accomplished teacher. He wondered whether the school or the teacher could help him now. If the Voroshin family was bound to the new Matarese there would be no revealing information in the intelligence data banks, of that he was certain. But was it here? Somewhere in the thousands of volumes that detailed the events of the revolution, of families and vast estates banished and carved up, all documented by historians of the time because they knew the time would never be seen again, the explosive beginnings of a new world. It had happened here in Leningrad—St. Petersburg—and Prince Andrei Voroshin was a part of the cataclysm. The revolutionary archives at the Saltykov-Shchedrin were the most extensive in all Russia; if there was a repository for any information about the Voroshins, it would be here. But being here was one thing, finding it something else again. Would his old teacher know where to look?

He turned left into the corridor lined with glass-paneled office doors, all dark except one at the end of the hallway. There was a dim light on inside, intermittently blocked by the silhouette of a figure passing back and forth in front of a desk lamp. It was Mikovsky’s office, the same room he had occupied for more than a quarter of a century, the
slow-moving figure beyond the rippled glass unmistakably that of the scholar.

He walked up to the door and knocked softly; the dark figure loomed almost instantly behind the glass.

The door opened and Yanov Mikovsky stood there, his wrinkled face still flushed from the cold outside, his eyes behind the thick lenses of his spectacles wide, questioning and afraid. He gestured for Vasili to come in quickly, shutting the door the instant Taleniekov was inside.

“Vasili Vasilovich!” The old man’s voice was part whisper, part cry. He held out his arms, embracing his younger friend. “I never thought I’d see you again.” He stepped back, his hands still on Taleniekov’s overcoat, peering up at him, his wrinkled mouth tentatively forming words that did not emerge. The events of the past half-hour were more than he could accept. Halting sounds emerged, but no meaning.