Bearpit (7 page)

‘Yes.'

‘Every night?'

‘Yes.'

Yuri sighed, hesitating. Precisely the sort of action his father had urged him to avoid, during those final, mutually irritated days – ‘
don't invoke our relationship … regard it as something to make life more difficult than easier
…
think politically
…' The last part of the injunction stayed with Yuri. Politically was exactly how he was thinking: politically and beyond his father's fragile eyrie. Time to shit or get off the pot. He said: ‘I would like to include something in tonight's shipment.'

‘A personal package?'

Yuri no longer felt contempt for the man. If there were an emotion it was pity. He said: ‘Something addressed to my father …' He paused again, deciding to offer the man a way out. He added: ‘Will you require it to be left unsealed, to be read?'

‘No!' said Solov. The rejection burst out in his eagerness to dissociate himself from any more unknown and unimagined dangers. ‘Our part of the pouch has to be completed by five,' advised Solov, helpfully. He'd debated enough; he wanted the meeting over, to think.

Yuri offered no explanation for what was a memorandum, not a letter. He presented it with absolutely correct formality, at the same time embarrassed that the phrasing were as if the person to whom he was communicating were
not
his father.
Don't invoke our relationship
, he thought. Yuri's arguments were so well formulated that it did not take him long and he was back at Solov's office – again avoiding Ilena's cubicle – with an hour to spare.

Solov accepted the sealed envelope and hurried it into the larger leather package in which other parcels and letters were already secured against unauthorized interception during the journey to Moscow. The interruption had allowed the
rezident
to recover some of his composure and he was anxious, too, to recover something of what he considered was the proper superior-to-subordinate relationship with the other man. He said: ‘There'd better be the right sort of reaction to this.'

There was.

Because of Vasili Malik's rank it was delivered within minutes of its arrival in Moscow, ahead of all the other pouch contents, and because of the source – and obvious sender – Malik opened it at once, initially believing in worried irritation that his son was improperly using a diplomatic communication channel. Which, technically, he was. But that was the briefest of Malik's thoughts, just as quickly dismissed as irrelevant. The assessments and implications of what was apparently being planned in Afghanistan – a country for which he was supposed to be responsible – crowded in upon him, appalling him. There was initial and instinctive fury, which he subdued, not wanting his reasoning clouded by emotion. And there was a lot to reason out, beyond the immediate crisis.

Malik personally issued and signed the cabled instructions to the Kabul
rezidentura
to abandon the gassing and poisoning and insisted that the
rezident
, Georgi Solov, acknowledge each section of the abandonment instructions to ensure that it was completely understood but more importantly to guarantee that no detail was overlooked. Still determined to be absolutely sure, Malik contacted – personally again – the Ministry of Defence and insisted upon duplicate orders being sent to the army, air force and
spetsnaz
units and acknowledged in the same manner as he demanded from the KGB personnel in Kabul.

The preliminary planning – air transporting the gas and poison, for instance – made it inevitable that the GRU were already aware of most, if not all of the planning. Malik accepted that their knowledge would become complete by his involving the military in the cancellation plans and that the back-biting gossip would begin within days. Just as he accepted that despite the supposed compartmenting within the KGB, details would spread throughout Dzerzhinsky Square. Which he welcomed, wanting as wide a circulation and awareness as possible that it had been his name upon the abort orders and no one else who made the calls to the Ministry of Defence.

Because even while he worked upon the cancellation, Malik was thinking beyond. This had not been a mistake, an aberration. This had been an attempted entrapment, something intended to destroy him within the first tentatively exploring weeks of his appointment.

The truth had to be investigated by official inquiry.

And such inquiries – certainly the sort of official inquiry Malik envisaged, damning indictments against the perpetrators, resounding praise for himself – needed documentary proof. Which had to be seized before there was any opportunity of it being destroyed or altered.

It was late afternoon before Malik was satisfied everything in Afghanistan was safely closed down. At once he issued a fresh set of instructions, the most urgent to the cipher room that all cable traffic between Moscow and Kabul for the preceding two months be sealed and delivered to him at once. He remembered his own memorandum well enough, of course. He recalled it from records and reread it carefully. Satisfied completely with its propriety, Malik put it to one side of his desk, ready to form part of the file he intended to create when the cables arrived.

What about witnesses? Yuri, he decided: the resounding praise deserved to be spread and nepotism wasn't a charge here. And Agayans, of course: the most significant cog in the entire machination. Vital not to miscalculate here by one iota. Certainly necessary to avoid any personal interrogation, to appear as if he were interfering or prejudging: it had to be the inquiry which returned a verdict, not him. Wrong, equally, not to make some sort of investigatory move into what could – without Yuri's intercession – have been an inconceivable catastrophe. Malik smiled to himself, at the ease of the resolve. It
was
an investigation. And on the prima-facie evidence there was sufficient for Agayans to be put under detention.

Vasili Dmitrevich Malik reached once more for the telephone that had been used so much that day. And made his only – but disastrous – mistake.

The security sections of all KGB directorates are run upon military guidelines – uniforms are invariably worn, for instance – with military requirements. One of those requirements is monthly attendance at a firearms installation to ensure that a necessary standard of marksmanship is maintained. The installation is established at Gofkovskoye Shosse and it was here that Malik located the newly promoted head of his directorate's internal discipline, Colonel Lev Konstantinovich Panchenko.

In his own office, which was just one hundred yards from that in which Malik had minutes before completed his conversation, Victor Kazin went physically cold, actually shivering, at Panchenko's immediate warning on the private, untraceable telephone.

‘I'm to arrest Agayans,' reported the colonel. ‘Something to do with Afghanistan.'

Kazin swallowed against the sensation of paralysis, driving himself to think. ‘Do it,' he said, hoarse-voiced. ‘But do it the way I've already ordered you to do it.'

‘I need more time!'

‘Do it!'

Georgi Solov still did not completely understand – in fact, he understood very little – but he was fairly sure that what could have created some personal difficulties for him had been avoided. He smiled across the desk in the Kabul
rezidentura
and said: ‘Everything cancelled.'

‘Of course,' said Yuri curtly. He guessed Solov wanted to make it appear a joint intervention.

‘And you're to return at once?' smiled Solov, gesturing to the message that lay between them.

‘That's what it says,' agreed Yuri. He didn't try to keep the impatience from his voice: he couldn't think now why he'd earlier felt pity for the dance-to-any-tune idiot.

‘Seems as if we were right to intervene,' attempted Solov, directly.

‘I was, wasn't I?' corrected Yuri. If there were to be credit given, Solov literally had to be weak in the head to imagine it would be shared.

7

He could not lose the numbness, the actual sensation of shivering coldness. It was far worse than the nervous, habitual shaking to which Kazin was now so accustomed that he was scarcely any longer aware of it. How had it happened! How had such an intricate but perfect scenario collapsed? How had Malik discovered it, to the apparent degree of issuing arrest orders, arrest orders that should have been in
his
name, not that of the very man it had all been designed to destroy: the very man who should have been arrested, destined for a
gulag.
Or worse!

Who'd talked: defected to Malik's camp, so soon? Agayans? An internal spy in the cipher section? A leak from the Kabul
rezidentura
to which the man's son was attached? Panchenko, he thought abruptly. He'd ordered Panchenko to go ahead as planned. Was that the mistake! Had he himself stupidly stumbled into a Malik-designed trap? Or …? Kazin tried to halt the unanswerable demands flooding into his mind, someone desperate to close the watertight doors of a sinking vessel against the destructive inrush of water. Good word, destructive: appropriate. That's what he risked being, destroyed, if he continued sitting there, letting the panic engulf him. Stop! Had to stop to think properly: analyse as best he could what might have happened. Then work it out. Dispassionately. No fear. No panic. Not more than it was possible to avoid, at least. Then plan. Blindly perhaps, in the immediate moment. But still try to plan. Minimize the potential dangers. If only … Kazin got the doors finally closed, actually panting like someone relieved after expending a great effort. Analyse was another good word, just as appropriate. One question – one consideration – at a time. Agayans first, then.

Agayans was a traditionalist, one of the old school acolytes, stretched to the absolute extreme of his ability, who ensured safety by unquestioning obedience. But there were those medical warnings of the man's increasing uncertainty. Might Agayans not have worried at the orders from one joint Chief Deputy to initiate retribution proposals upon a memorandum issued by the other? And seen safety in approaching Malik? Kazin's coldness spread further through him, at a further recollection; hadn't Agayans actually queried whether Malik should be included in the supposed Afghanistan planning? Quickly – to Kazin's sighed relief – came the contradiction, the strongest and most convincing argument
against
it being Agayans. Malik would not have ordered the arrest of his prime witness; rather he'd be embalming Agayans in featherdown, ensuring every comfort and protection.

The cipher room? Again unlikely to the point of impossibility. There were rotating shifts so no one single man would have encoded all the messages to Kabul and so been able to evolve a complete picture of what was intended. And even if one man had handled everything, there would have been no reason for protest. Or – more important still – have any reason to link Malik with it.

Kabul
had
to be the most likely source. From that cosseted, spoiled bastard of a son. But yet again that was impossible: any message from Kabul would invariably have been routed through Agayans. Who could then have intercepted it?

So how? And how much? Useless conjecture: he wanted positives and all he could speculate were negatives. Positives then. Protect himself. Against the unknown and the unseen but protect himself as much as he felt possible. Definite links with Agayans had to be the most dangerous and he'd already planned here: planned, he reflected bitterly, to prove his complete uninvolvement in a politically absurd proposal which should – but couldn't any longer – have entrapped Malik into appearing to be the architect.

The most direct link was the memorandum in which Agayans had set out the proposal and to which Kazin had been careful only to give unprovable verbal acceptance. He took it now from his safe, with no need to read it again. Across it he scrawled ‘Unacceptable. Unequivocable rejection' and added the date to coincide with that of the day Agayans had written and annotated it. Also from the safe he extracted a backlog of documentation for his secretariat's attention and dispersal, carefully sorting through until he reached the appropriate and matching date, inserting the Agayans document into the place it would have properly occupied if his supposed refusal had occurred on the day he received it. Just as carefully he placed the whole pile in the Out tray, for the following morning's collection. Kazin pulled his appointment diary towards him, studying the two entries. Both read: ‘Review of position in Afghanistan. No further action.'

What would the entries in Agayans' diary read? The floodwaters began to seep in again as Kazin realized there would be no opportunity for him to seize and have undetectably changed whatever notes or documentation Agayans might have left, which had always been the intention. A fresh numbness began to move through the plump, sweat-dampened man and then the telephone sounded.

‘There's been an unforeseen incident,' reported Panchenko, using the coded phrase that had been agreed between them.

Relief – slight but still relief – moved through Kazin. He said: ‘Thank you for telling me,' and replaced the receiver. There still remained too many uncertainties, too many unknown dangers.

The first two days there had been anxiety, a will-there-won't-there-be tenseness, but the designated book had been properly upright in its rack in the United Nations library. On the following day Yevgennie Levin's attitude changed to one of expectation because Proctor, who had never let him down, had after all promised three days at the outside. And this was the third day. The boring, unread census document was there, like before; still upright, still undisturbed, still unread.

Levin's eyes clouded in frustration, and careless of being seen he closed them tight against the emotion. All the preparation had been against difficulties arising on his side, not that of the Americans. So what had happened? What had gone wrong?