Tim Powers - Declare

“Yes.” The Armenian nodded and rubbed his forehead. “I wonder why Theodora led you to believe your Armenian infiltrators were imaginary.”

Hale sighed, remembering one item from the list of his cover-story crimes as Theodora had summarized them in the conference room at Number 10 Downing Street five days ago: Oh yes, and you took money from a now-deceased Russian illegal to break a couple of their agents out of a Turk prison and smuggle them safely back across the Soviet border; the illegal kept no records, so it can’t be disproved. There’s a good deal more, you’ll be briefed in Kuwait.

He did it so that my name would be on the SIS orders, Hale thought; I would certainly have been more circumspect if I had known that this “infiltration” was not only real but in effect a cooperative deal with the Russian secret service! Even back then, in 1948, the old man was laying the groundwork for my eventual disgraceful cover story, in case it might one day be needed!

And he remembered again his suspicion that Theodora intended to “establish the truth about him,” have him assassinated, after this operation was completed.

“Why would he lead you to believe that?” Mammalian repeated. The man’s hands were clenched into fists on the table. “And why would he nevertheless give you my correct name?”

“Well, since it turns out you were a real person, I suppose I needed your correct name to put through the SIS paper-work consistently,” said Hale. “As to why he let me believe you were a fiction, invented to fool the SIS-I don’t know. I suppose so that I’d know as little as possible, if the SIS or the KGB were to question me.”

It chilled him now, in this disorienting 1963, to realize that he had been hiding from both services, in 1948. And he was even more of a fugitive from both now.

“But he deluded you,” Mammalian said, “and freed me, so that the Russian Ararat operation could take place. You weren’t to know that he wanted the operation to happen, wanted your men to run into opposition! Perhaps he was working for the KGB! Perhaps he is still!”

“No, that wasn’t it.” Hale rubbed his hands over his face. “He did want the Russians to awaken the djinn, but I’m sure he didn’t know about your…about the ambush you set up for us.” Set up with Philby’s help, he thought. “Theodora believed that our Shihab meteorite couldn’t kill the djinn until they had…opened their gates to your party, and in that way become vulnerable to our attack. The possibility of effective opposition from-you-was a regrettable necessity.”

Mammalian was nodding, but skeptically. “That was and is true, that about the opened gates. Even buckshot bounces off, when the gates are closed. But I wonder if he is still deluding you-I wonder if he stage-managed it so that you would kill those two men last week in England and predictably flee to Kuwait, where we would predictably approach you.”

Hale’s chest was cold, for Mammalian was getting far too close to the truth-and he forced himself to frown as if at a difficult chess problem. “You think he’s running me now ?”

Mammalian laughed softly. “And perhaps for the KGB! I don’t accuse you of dishonesty, my friend. I’m confident that if he is running you now, it is without your knowledge. I will certainly make sure that your Shihab stone is ground to powder and sifted into the sea! And even so, I may advise that we abort the operation. What did you learn from the Kurds?”

Hale’s mouth was dry at the thought that the operation might be canceled, that he might not get a chance to avenge the men he had led to their deaths on that wild night fourteen years ago-in spite of what he had told Mammalian earlier this evening, he did want vrej, vengeance-but he forced a laugh. “How could he have had me followed-”

“That is my worry, Andrew. What did you learn from the Kurds?”

Hale wished for hot coffee, but didn’t dare ask for it directly after a hard question; he had learned about Cassagnac’s precious amomon thistle from the Kurds, and he was sure that Theodora did not want him telling this Rabkrin agent anything at all about the amomon.

“First I went to the train crossing at the border. Let me tell it in order. Guy Burgess was there, with Philby.”

“Ah! I was there too, but hidden in the undercarriage of the baggage car.” Mammalian topped up their glasses with the clear liquor and clouded it with splashes of water.

The railway line that crossed the border by Kizilçakçak had been the only train crossing along the entire eastern Soviet border; the rails had been laid for the old Russian five-foot gauge, and the nineteenth-century locomotive that traversed it twice a week ran from Kars to a station only three miles into the Soviet territory, after which it retraced the route in reverse, with the locomotive pushing from behind.

The train had come chuffing up from the west on that chilly spring Wednesday morning, white smoke billowing up out of its Victorian smokestack and trailing away over the three cars it pulled, and it screeched to a steaming halt on the Turkish side of the iron bridge that marked the frontier-the tall barbed-wire fence stretched away to north and south on either side, strung down the center of a broad strip of dirt that was kept plowed to show the footprints of anyone who might cross.

Khaki-clad Turk askers stood with rifles beside the weathered sign that announced KARS-SOVIYET SINIRI, the border between the Soviet Union and the Kars district of Turkey, and four Russian soldiers in green uniforms marched across the bridge from a black Czech Tatra sedan parked on the eastern side; two of the Russians were clearly officers, with blue bands around the visors of their caps and gold epaulettes on their shoulders, while the other two were plain pogranichniki , border guards carrying rifles with bayonets. The Russians and the Turks saluted one another, and the Turk soldiers handed over a sheaf that presumably was the train crew’s passports and any bills of lading.

Hale was standing beside Philby and the stocky, red-faced Burgess in the shadow of a guard shack a hundred feet away from the tracks on the western side, and all three watched the two pogranichniki walk around the train cars, poking their bayonet blades into the spaces under the carriages.

“I h-hope your Armenians are s-s- stoical about a blade or two up their arses,” said Philby softly to Hale. They were dressed in anonymous khaki for this dawn outing, and they were being careful not to be heard speaking English. “Though some m-might like it, I sup-s-suppose. Do you f-fancy any of those pogranichniki, G-Guy?”

Hale was making a modest show of glancing covertly at the train, and he wished the other two Englishmen had not come along to observe. Philby had insisted on driving them all out here in an embassy-pool jeep, and he was the Head of Station.

“Pooh!” said Burgess, pouting his full lips toward the Russian soldiers. “Slavs have shovel faces. Slav probably means shovel in some Balkan language.”

“Be quiet,” whispered Hale.

Burgess turned from Philby to give Hale a pop-eyed stare. Perceiving that Hale was annoyed, he went on in a mock-reasonable tone. “It’s true. Look-you or I, if we were starving and saw a potato growing in the dirt, we’d dig it out and cook it.” His breath was sharp with vodka, though the sun was hardly above the eastern hills. “But Slavic facial features are clearly evolved for diving right into the dirt to eat the potato, dirt and all, not bothering with the hands: the teeth slant out, there’s no chin to get in the way, the cheekbones make fenders, and the eyes slant back and up, and the ears are set back to keep the dirt out.”