Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

“Maybe something we haven’t yet got,” said Danilov. An hour later he said, “And this could be it,” after Pavin called from Petrovka to say that the records of 230 former KGB and Federal Security Bureau personnel had been delivered, with a note from the archive supervisor that there could be that many more again still to come. Nikolai Mikhailovich Belik was also demanding contact.

Cowley said, “We’re being buried under paper.”

“Which might be the idea,” suggested Danilov. He thought the cynicism might actually be true when he returned to Petrovka. Some of the dossiers were more than two inches thick, and Pavin had taken over a small lecture room adjoining his office to accommodate them all.

Pavin said at once, “I’ve got the key and as far as I know there’s only one spare.” He extended his hand. “And that’s it. What about Mizin?”

“You know one of the favorite mottoes of the old KGB? The spy you know is better than the spy you don’t know. Mizin stays until there’s a use for him.”

Pavin said, “The minister’s called again.”

“It’s best I spend as much time as I’m doing at the U.S. Embassy: It distances you-you and the few others we might be able to trust here.”

“I didn’t realize you were that exposed.”

A totally unconnected thought suddenly presented itself. “Does your church do charity work?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve got all Olga’s things-dresses, stuff like that-in the car. Could you find a use for it?”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.”

He still had to give Olga’s photographs to Irena to pass on to Igor. Igor who? he suddenly wondered, realizing he didn’t know the full name of the man who’d made Olga pregnant. The name wasn’t important or necessary. He’d keep one, he decided-their wedding photograph. He didn’t know why. It just seemed the right thing to do. An easier decision than the one he’d made about choosing professional sides.

Danilov’s office television was showing the early-morning buildup of protesters outside the U.S. Embassy and promising coverage of the public appearance of Henry Hartz and the Russian president, expected later in the day. The alley beside the legation had been sealed off by Moscow militia, but it was still possible to see the blackened and burst-apart side of the compound over the shoulder of the CNN reporter who was suggesting that the absence of any FBI statement indicated a total lack of progress.

The American axiom Danilov had always liked about being caught between a rock and a hard place didn’t seem so slick now that he was the one in the middle. Committed, he reminded himself. Too late now to change his mind. All he could hope to do- had to do-was cushion as much as possible one of the hard surfaces between which he was being squeezed.

Danilov was connected at once to Georgi Chelyag, who listened without comment to his and Cowley’s interpretation of the intercepted telephone conversation. When they did start to discuss it, Danilov patiently put up all the middle-of-the-night arguments against sealing off both the Moscow and Gorki plants they knew to hold germ warfare weapons or doing anything to disclose the importance of the Golden Hussar.

“We know we’ve got time,” stressed Danilov, trying to direct the conversation. “There’s Chicago and now the intelligence files.”

“I can order Kedrov to produce Gavri-identify him-if it’s a code designation.”

“I don’t think it is. I don’t see the point of Orlenko and the woman continuing to use it and he’s in America, not here. All we’d risk is alerting them, if there is still a link with the Security Bureau.”

“I think we’re standing back too much,” protested the presidential aide.

“Is that the White House view? Or that of the rest of the control group?” demanded Danilov. The moment of truth or of suicidal self-destruction? He could easily have already pressed the self-destruct button.

A response was a long time coming. “The inference from that question-those two questions-is that one is very different from the other.”

“They might be.”

“From what? Or whom?” demanded Chelyag.

There was no purpose in continuing the ambiguity. “I have been ordered to duplicate my reports to the interior minister.”

“Which I have forbidden.”

“And which puts me in the impossible position I feared would arise. And has.”

Nikolai Mikhailovich Belik’s call came within thirty minutes. “I warned you against choosing the wrong side.”

“I don’t regard it as choosing sides. I’m following orders.”

“Don’t you think you might have overlooked something?”

“What?”

“How long, constitutionally, a man is allowed to serve as Russian president. And how, when he leaves office, all his acolytes and supporters are swept away with him.”

Pavin appeared at the door, gesturing that the other call on Danilov’s blinking telephone console was important.

“I told you to wait!”

“We didn’t have any direct evidence. We needed a confession, which we got,” said Reztsov. “Your jurisdiction doesn’t extend to Gorki.”

“That of the White House does. Having got the confession, why didn’t you tell me before going to seize Zotin!”

“We needed to arrest him, too. Wrap everything up.”

“So the maintanence man at Plant 35 who confessed to supplying Nikov with the UN’s warhead committed suicide in his cell and Aleksai Zotin died resisting arrest?”

“That’s what happened. There is the confession implicating Zotin. And the evidence of an entire spetznaz squad of his brigade fighting to prevent Zotin being taken into custody. Six others died. The theft from Plant 35 is solved.”

Not even Reztsov’s arrogance would have been as great as this without the confidence of official support. “Everything wrapped up.”

“That’s what I said,” reminded Reztsov.

“But I meant it differently from the way you did,” said Danilov.

It had been Georgi Chelyag’s suggestion during the morning conversation that the impression of a combined investigation could be achieved-after announcing the intention in advance-by publicly bringing an FBI group from the embassy to Petrovka. There was an additional, practical benefit of giving them more space in which to compare the Golden Hussar photographs against those in the personnel files of ex-intelligence officers.

To protect their identities, the American group left Ulitza Chaykovskovo in an enclosed minibus, which actually got hammered by some of the protesters both leaving the embassy and arriving at militia headquarters. The closed vehicle minimized much of what Chelyag had hoped by the exercise but at least provided new television footage.

Danilov relied entirely on Yuri Pavin’s selection of three juniorgrade militia detectives for whose honesty the man vouched to comprise the Russian contingent. All three were young, none more than thirty.

They’d been given the records of redundant employees from every department of the old and new intelligence organization. Danilov concentrated the search upon the First Chief Directorate, exclusively responsible for overseas espionage. Following the logic that only someone attached to that directorate or one of its subdepartments-most likely the archival-would have had access to so many CIA identities. That reduced the 230 possibilities to 52. Six were women.

“We can always extend-we will, whatever the outcome-if nothing comes from the first search,” he told his deputy.

While the groups were divided up, with Pavin the liaison officer, Danilov drew Cowley aside from the American group to recount his conversation with Gorki.

Spacing his words, Cowley said, “That is quite simply beyond belief.”