The Sisters (12 page)

"I assume you are looking into how he got out," the general interrupted.

"The special area of interest of this board is what he took with him."

The KGB man shrugged. "Turov's been out of circulation for six months."

The lieutenant colonel from the Party Control Commission said, "He can tell them almost everything there is to know about our sleeper school-how we recruit candidates, how we train them, how we inject them into America-"

"It is unlikely he can tell them anything they don't already know,"

insisted the KGB man. "About twelve months ago one of Turov's sleepers went over to the Americans when he received his awakening signal. You chaired a damage-control session on him. General."

"If Turov has nothing of value to offer, why did someone go to all that trouble to get him out?" the blind man, sitting on the right hand of the general, inquired quietly.

"A pertinent question," acknowledged the general.

From across the river, a hollow roar drifted up from Lenin Stadium. A young aide in uniform dashed into the study and whispered something in the general's ear. "Two-one, Dynamo, on a penalty shot by Misha Tsipin,"

the general announced gleefully. He turned to the KGB man. "Why did they go to all that trouble to get him out?" he asked with exaggerated politeness. He had developed a theory when he received his first star that politeness, out of context, was appropriately menacing. "Surely he had something of value to offer them."

The KGB man turned a page in his dossier. "There is still one sleeper on the active list who was trained by Turov while he was novator. He is planted in America, awaiting the signal that will activate him."

"Does Turov know the identity under which the sleeper operates?" the General asked.

The KGB man nodded gloomily. "In the sleeper's dossier, the legend was typed. But the awakening signal was written in ink. We have ascertained that the handwriting is Turov's."

"To sum up, ' said the general, shifting uncomfortably in his chair because of his gout, "we must assume that the defector Turov is familiar with the identity under which the sleeper is operating, as well as the coded signal that will convince him he is being activated to perform a mission for Moscow Center."

There was dead silence around the table. The Central Committee representative poured a glass of mineral water and sipped it thoughtfully. The KGB man pulled his Chesterfields from his pocket.

"Does the General object if I smoke?" he asked in a subdued voice.

"I most emphatically do," snapped the general. "Cigarette smoke stimulates bile, which poisons the blood and leads to attacks of gout.

Ten minutes in a room with cigarette smoke and no amount of acupuncture can alleviate the pain."

The pack of cigarettes disappeared back into the KGB man's pocket.

The Party Control Commission representative remarked, "What good would all this information do Turov, or the Americans, assuming, as we must, that he conveys it to them, unless he knew where to find the sleeper?

Before I was posted to the Party Control Commission, I was assigned to the KGB's Second Chief Directorate. I remember how these things worked.

Once the sleeper passed out of the novator's hands-once he graduated from the school to fieldwork-his dossier was taken over by the particular Merchant at Moscow Center who would run him. The sleeper's location in America would be known to the Merchant, but not to the novator--especially not to a novator who had been put out to pasture and no longer had access to dossiers of his graduates."

The KGB man nodded. "Our comrade from the Party Control Commission is quite correct. There is no way that Turov could be familiar with the sleeper's location in America. He could be anywhere, for all he knows."

The blind man tapped his baton against the leg of his chair. "Turov knows where the sleeper is." he stated flatly.

"That is simply not possible," the KGB man insisted in a nervous voice.

"There is no way he could have had access to that piece of information."

The blind man reached into his breast pocket, extracted a brown envelope and offered it to the general. From beyond the window there was another roar, but nobody paid attention to it. The general pulled two pieces of paper from the envelope. "Photocopies," he said.

"Two sides of an American picture postcard," the blind man acknowledged.

"These were picked up as part of a regular intercept program on foreign-source mail passing through the Central Post Office. The picture postcard in question was sent to Turov from Brooklyn, New York, several months after the sleeper was inserted into America. The awakening phrase in the sleeper's dossier, the one in Turov's own handwriting, happens to be a line taken from the works of the revisionist American poet Whitman."

"And the picture on the postcard," announced the general, examining it closely, "shows the facade of a house in Brooklyn Heights that Whitman once lived in."

"The message on the picture postcard," continued the blind man, "is not important. But the handwriting is-it's definitely that of the sleeper.

He was informing his novator, despite express rules which forbid this kind of communication, that he had rented rooms in a building once occupied by Whitman."

"If Turov knows where the sleeper is in America," said the Party Control Commission representative, "this is very bad news indeed."

"It opens the possibility," said the blind man, staring sightlessly in the general's direction, "that the novator will convey to the American Central Intelligence Agency information that will permit its operatives to activate and control a Soviet agent in place. Once awakened by the proper coded signal, the sleeper will assume he is being run by his superiors in Moscow, and carry out his orders. Which means that the Americans have the potential of committing a crime-any crime-and then arranging for the blame to fall on us."

"The ideal solution to the problem," the general mused-he appeared to be talking to himself-"would be to eliminate the sleeper before the possibility you raise becomes a reality."

The blind man scraped his chair back from the table and crossed his legs. "We have two Canadians on tap in Toronto for an eventuality such as this. But the chances of their getting to the sleeper before the Central Intelligence Agency activates him are almost nonexistent. The CIA has had Turov for two days already. They will recognize the obvious advantage, the necessity even, of moving rapidly."

"Which leaves us with a potentially explosive problem on our hands," the general noted. His voice had turned polite again; he was extremely irritated.

"We are not without potential solutions," suggested the blind man.

The Politburo representative leaned forward. He was a classic case of someone whose importance derived from the fact that he reported back to important people. "Would the director of Department 13 care to be more specific?" he asked in a way that left the blind man little choice.

In his eagerness to know the answer, the general reiterated the question. "What are the potential solutions?"

"Like any good lawyer," explained the blind man, "we must construct our case proving that the CIA is responsible for the crime, always assuming one will be committed. To begin with, we have the defection of the novator of the sleeper school, the awakening signal, the legend, the copy of the picture postcard, all of which tend to support our story that the control of the sleeper was exercised by the CIA, and not Moscow Center."

"We will have a hard time convincing the world of that," the Politburo man said dryly.

"When the time comes to convince the world," the blind man said matter-of-factly, "we will arrange for someone inside the American intelligence community to testify on our behalf."

"This is within the realm of possibility?" the general asked, making no effort to mask his astonishment.

"It is within the realm of certainty," announced the blind man.

Later, while various participants were waiting in the foyer for their limousines to be summoned, the general hobbled over to the blind man and the KGB's Second Chief Directorate man. "I neglected to ask you whether there were any ongoing operations that were likely to be jeopardized by the defection of the novator. It is something I should include in my post-mortem report."

The KGB man shook his head. "We have no problems," he said.

The general directed his voice at the blind man. "How about Department 13?"

"Actually, we have one operation under way in America," he said. "We are running an agent, via a Cuban cutout. His principal mission is to neutralize some of the more outspoken anti-Castro people in the country,"

"Wetwork?" asked the general, an eyebrow dancing up in interest.

"Wetwork," acknowledged the blind man, using the professional term for assassinations. "The agent is listed in your current operations portfolio under the code name Khanda, which is Hindu for 'double-edged sword.' As far as I can tell, the defection of the novator will have no effect on Khanda."

Another roar drifted up from Lenin Stadium across the Moscow River. The general's young aide came trotting into the foyer. "Dynamo scored again in the final seconds," he cried. "It's all over, with Dynamo on top three-one."

The general's face relaxed into one of those famous sour smiles he was noted for using when he appeared on television. "Let us hope," he remarked, "that all of our games end on a similar note."

Outside it was night, inside too-a "Ninth-month midnight," in the words of Whitman.

Mesmerized by the headlights, Svetochka had stared for the better part of an hour at the traffic on the Ringstrasse, the boulevard that circled the inner city. Suddenly she had drawn the thick curtains across the bay window with an angry jerk, cutting of the noise of traffic so abruptly it seemed as if a needle had been lifted off a phonograph record.

She had been pleased at first with the small hotel on the quiet side street off the Ringstrasse; with the subtle click of the desk clerk's heels; with the three-room top-floor suite; with the four-poster bed; with the cream-colored sheets and the enormous fluffy square pillows in lace cases. She had stripped to the skin in the white-tiled bathroom and soaked in the high tub for the better part of an hour, and then phoned down for tea and little cakes the size of fingernails. But when they arrived, lined up in rows on an oval silver tray, she discovered she was unable to swallow. Her throat had constricted, her stomach had knotted up.

"In fear," she burst out when the Potter insisted on knowing why.

"Svetochka can't eat, Svetochka can't shit, Svetochka can't think straight because Svetochka is afraid"

"Afraid of what?" the Potter pleaded with her. "We are safe here. The hotel is guarded. The top floor is sealed off. The Austrians, the Americans, they will not allow anything to happen to us."

It was at this point that Svetochka became mesmerized by the headlights on the Ringstrasse, and then jerked closed the thick curtains, creating a night inside the room to match the night outside.

"The Austrians, the Americans," she spat out, "can't protect Svetochka from you!"

"From me?" The Potter moved toward her, intending to take her in his arms, fumble for a breast, apologize profusely for existing.

Svetochka shrank back against a wall. She had always been aroused by the Potter's potential for violence; aroused even more by her ability to control it, tame him. But she had lost the thread of confidence. She stared across the room, imagining the Potter's hands molding themselves around her neck. Now that she knew they had been used to strangle someone, her skin crawled, her heart ached at the idea of being caressed by them. "Don't come near Svetochka," she whispered fiercely.

"What do you think I will do to you?" the Potter demanded.

Svetochka's breath came in short, desperate gasps. She fumbled for words. "I think maybe . . . you will . . . hurt . . . Svetochka."

The Potter's voice filtered out of the darkness as if it were a faint suggestion of light. "Are you afraid of night, Svetochka? Are you afraid of death?"

From the shadows along the wall, Svetochka moaned. "Aren't you?"

The Potter felt for the wall switch, found it, illuminated the filaments in the tiny flame-shaped bulbs in the overhead chandelier. In his official capacity as novator, he had once asked Piotr Borisovich the very same question. I live by Jung's dictum, his last, his best sleeper had replied without hesitation. Jung's dictum? (The Potter hadn't been familiar with it, Jung being persona non grata in the Soviet Union.) That the second part of life is ruined, Piotr Borisovich had explained, his head cocked, his eyes studying the novator, unless we are prepared to welcome death. "I welcome death," the Potter told Svetochka now, "as another in a long line of possible solutions to my problem."

After a while Svetochka calmed down, though she grew tense when he got up to turn out the overhead bulbs; the filaments of light had become linked to the filaments of Svetochka's sanity. Seeing the expression on her face, the Potter left the light on.

Thursday rang up on the house phone to see how they were getting along.

The Potter told him they were getting along nicely, thank you. Thursday asked if they lacked anything, anything at all. All they had to do was name it, he insisted, giggling nervously through the phone. You are too kind for words, the Potter responded in the tight voice that indicated he had taken an important decision. When Thursday hung up, the Potter announced he was going to shower, and beckoned Svetochka to follow him.

In the bathroom he turned on the hot and cold taps full force to mask his voice from the microphones that were bound to be planted. He brought his lips close to Svetochka's ear. "I am leaving," he told her.

"Leaving?"

"Leaving you. Leaving here."

Relief swept through Svetochka's body at the thought of being rid of him. "Where will you go?" she whispered back.

The word emerged from the back of the Potter's consciousness.

"Anywhere," he said.

"You said the hotel was guarded," Svetochka said. She was desperate for him to be gone. The idea of being touched by him sent pulses of fear up her spine. "You think they'll let you simply walk out of here?"