LITMIR.BIZ

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personality. “You must bring your son in, Sheldon. It will be worth—lots of money. Eh?”

      The car pulled away, and Bonner was left feeling suddenly isolated on that sunny stretch of road, with the city close by but somehow unreal, as if it was unpopulated, as if he was the only man on earth. He had no idea how close he had come to dying.

      He walked up the hill, sweating again, and found the taxi. On the back seat was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

      Bonner went back to his hotel and turned on the television and began to drink. It was only early afternoon, but he was content to sit there, watching the bright colors, hearing the language he did not understand, a man more comfortable with his loneliness than with any other companion the teeming city could offer.

      He began to plan how he would turn his son into a spy.

      1615 Zulu. Moscow.

      Ouspenskaya slipped into the Director’s office after a single knock. The receptionist was gone, the building quiet except for the duty crews on the second floor, and here and there some manager like the Director plugging away. He knew she was coming.

      “Well? What is urgent?” His cold was worse.

      “Efremov.”

      “Yes?”

      She sat down. Her hands were trembling. She was truly wretched, for something monstrous had obtruded into this place, this idea she had of Moscow and being Russian, as if an obscene animal had dragged its slime across her foot. “Five days ago, a gang attacked an office in the Stitkin Building here in Moscow. Twenty-nine dead.”

      “I remember.” He guessed at once; his voice showed it.

      “The office was Efremov’s latest front operation. Venux, Inc. To run the four agents I told you of.”

      “Oh, my God.” He was breathing through his mouth like an adenoidal child, looking absurd and feeling dreadful. “My God,” he said again as he saw it all. “They wiped out the entire operation.”

      She nodded. “A hired job. Ex-military all over it.”

      “Maybe it’s a fake—”

      She shook her head. “What do you think, the Army did it? No, no! It’s just what we’re doing to ourselves! Efremov disappears; somebody wipes out his best operation—every clerk, every computer operator; they burned the place out—files, disks, shredder, everything! We’re already four days late; the police treated it as ordinary crime—‘ordinary,’ ah!—and our people didn’t go in until I sent them an hour ago. There’s already been looting of what’s left. What kind of people are we becoming?”

      “You think—the father of the girlfriend? Mafia?”

      “I don’t know. For what? Revenge?” She shrugged. “I’m having Papa Malenkov brought in. No pussy-footing. I’ve told them to rough him up and see what he says. Let him know we’re not the Moscow police.” She shook her head. “But it doesn’t add up. If it’s a message to us, why hit a disguised operation that we don’t know about? If it’s a message to Efremov, where is he? Is he dead? Then what’s the point?” She wiped her cheeks, sank back. What she was suffering was grief, grief for a lost ideal. “Maybe he’s dead. But maybe he isn’t. And if he isn’t—”

      “If he isn’t—Maybe he did it. Eh? You say this operation was new—a few months. Nine? Nine. So—maybe, that long ago, he was planning—something?”

      “It seems far-fetched. But Efremov could be very cute if he wanted to. He liked to cover his tracks, even long before—mmm—current conditions.”

      The Director made a face. “Say it. Long before perestroika. My God! The good old days.” He made a sound, something between a laugh and a groan. “My God, Ouspenskaya, what a ball of shit it’s all turned into! Any idea where Efremov would go?”

      “None.”

      “Out of the country?”

      “I suppose.”

      “You’ve checked the various agencies that—of course you have. All right, he was clever, he was an old campaigner, he could have gone over any border he wanted. I’m only brainstorming, mind you—improvising; I’m sure he’s dead, in fact. But let’s say, for argument’s sake, he isn’t. Presumably he had money abroad. Well. So, he destroys the organization that handles his best agents. To deny us? Of course, a nice joke, one ‘in your eye,’ as they say. He never liked me, I might say. You, I always thought he had his eye on. No? Well, there you are. I’m a bureaucrat, not a human relations specialist. Presumably he plans to take himself to somebody else, with his star agents as his salesman’s samples—eh? So he destroys everything and everybody who can track those agents. Well, that makes a grisly kind of sense. So who does he go to? The Americans? Not likely; he really despised the Americans. Notice I talk of him in the past tense, as if he were dead.” He made the laughing groan again, trying to break through her mood. Failing, he said, “Please, Ouspenskaya!” He came around the desk, stood in front of her, patted her shoulder. He only made things worse: she began to weep. The Director poured a glass of water from his carafe (made in Sweden) and held it out to her.

      “There’s something else,” she said.

      “Oh, shit.” He retreated behind his desk.

      “I’m sure there’s a discrepancy between his claims for eighty agents and the agents themselves. I haven’t got proof yet, but there’s too much organization, too much system manipulation, and not enough information. I think some of the eighty are dummies.”

      He leaned his forehead on one hand. “Not all of them. Efremov got wonderful information from real agents!”

      “I have an idea, Director.”

      “Good, because I certainly don’t.”

      “There is probably more in the computers than we can tease out. We need specialists. The computer was installed ages ago by East Germans who would not even be seen speaking to us now. Let’s go to the Americans.”

      He paused, a tissue halfway to his nose.

      “The Americans know everything about computers,” she went on. She was more cheerful, talking about what could be done. “We tell them that Efremov has bolted and that one of his agents is American. That will make them hot, you know. Then we tell them there is more in the computer but we can’t winkle it out. We will let their specialists into the computer if they will replace the system with IBM machines when they are done. And give us whatever they find of Efremov’s. We lose nothing. And they will take care of Efremov for us.”

      He stared at her.

      “I am sick of using low-end technology!” she shouted. “And I want a new telephone, too!”

      He swiveled to look out the window. The rain was still streaming down. He balled a damp tissue between his palms, rolling it back and forth, back and forth, at last dropped it into the plastic bag, then got up and left the office. She heard the water run in his private bathroom. The toilet flushed. He came out wiping his hands on a handkerchief.

      “Not yet,” he said.

      She hitched forward in her chair. “I was approached by an American at the Venice Conference. A very obvious move—in fact, she said so. ‘Now that the Cold War is over,’ and so on. I know I could make the contact!”

      “Of course you could make a contact; I could make a contact; who couldn’t? You’re not thinking clearly, Ouspenskaya. No, letting the Americans into Efremov’s computer files would be obscene. Just now. Not that I wouldn’t do it if I was absolutely sure he was alive and working for somebody else.”

      “He has been responsible for killing twenty-nine of his own people. And he is a traitor!”

      “You don’t know that!

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