Red Rabbit Part 38

"He's a young Hungarian conductor touring Eastern Europe. He has a fine reputation, darling. The program is supposed to be Brahms and Bach, I think-one of the Hungarian state orchestras and," he added, "a lot of good shopping." There wasn't a woman in all the world who wouldn't respond favorably to that opportunity, Oleg judged. He waited patiently for the next objection: "I don't have anything to wear."

"My dear, that is why we're going to Budapest. You will be able to buy anything you need there."

"Well . . ."

"And remember to pack everything you need in one bag. We'll take empty bags for all the things we're buying for ourselves and our friends."

"But-"

"Irina, think of Budapest as one big consumer-goods store. Hungarian VCRs, Western jeans and pantyhose, real perfume. You will be the envy of your office at GUM," he promised her.

"Well . . ."

"I thought so. My darling, we are going on vacation!" he told her, a little manly force in his voice.

"If you say so," she responded, with the hint of an avaricious smile. "I will call in to the office later and let them know. I suppose they won't miss me too badly."

"The only people they miss in Moscow are the Politburo members, and they only miss them for the day and a half it takes to replace them," he announced.

And so that was settled. They were taking the train to Hungary. Irina started thinking about what to pack. Oleg would leave that to her. Inside a week or ten days, we will all have much better clothes, the KGB communications officer told himself. And maybe in a month or two, they would go to that Disney Planet place in the American province of Florida....

He wondered if CIA knew how much trust he was putting in them, and he prayed-an unusual activity for a KGB officer-that they would perform as well as he hoped.

"GOOD MORNING, JACK."

"Hey, Simon. What's new in the world?" Jack set his coffee down before taking his coat off.

"Suslov died last night," Harding announced. "It will be in their afternoon papers."

"What a pity. Another bat found his way back into h.e.l.l, eh?" At least he died with good eyesight, thanks to Bernie Katz and the guys from Johns Hopkins, Ryan thought. "Complications of diabetes?"

Harding shrugged. "Plus being old, I should imagine. Heart attack, our sources tell us. Amazing that the nasty old b.u.g.g.e.r actually had a heart. In any case, his replacement will be Mikhail Yevgeniyevich Alexandrov."

"And he's not exactly a day at the beach. When will they plant Suslov?"

"He's a senior Politburo member. I would expect a full state funeral, marching band, the lot, then cremation and a slot in the Kremlin wall."

"You know, I've always wondered, what does a real communist think about when he knows he's dying? You suppose they wonder if it was all a great big f.u.c.king mistake?"

"I have no idea. But Suslov was evidently a true believer. He probably thought of all the good he'd done in his life, leading humanity to the 'Radiant Future' they like to talk about."

n.o.body's that dumb, Ryan wanted to retort, but Simon was probably right. Nothing lingered longer in a man's mind than a bad idea, and certainly Red Mike had held his bad ideas close to whatever heart had finally cashed in. But a communist's best-case scenario for after death corresponded with Ryan's worst, and if the communist was wrong, then, quite literally, there was h.e.l.l to pay. Tough luck, Mishka, hope you took some sunblock with you.

"Okay, what's up for today?"

"The PM wants to know if this will have any effect on Politburo policy."

"Tell her no, it won't. In political terms, Alexandrov might as well be Suslov's twin brother. He thinks Marx is G.o.d, and Lenin is his prophet, and Stalin was mostly right, just a little too nekulturniy in his application of political theory. The rest of the Politburo doesn't really believe that stuff anymore, but they have to pretend that they do. So call Alexandrov the new conductor of the ideological symphony orchestra. They don't much like the music anymore, but they dance to it anyway, 'cause it's the only dance they know. I don't think he will affect their policy decisions a dot. I bet they listen when he talks, but they let it go in one ear and out the other; they pretend to respect him, but they really don't."

"It's a little more complex than that, but you've caught the essentials," Harding agreed. "The thing is, I have to find a way to produce ten doubles.p.a.ced pages that say it."

"Yeah, in bureaucratese." Ryan had never quite mastered that language, which was one of the reasons Admiral Greer liked him so much.

"We have our procedures, Jack, and the PM-indeed, all of the Prime Ministers-like to have it in words they understand."

"The Iron Lady understands the same language as a stevedore, I bet."

"Only when she speaks those words, Sir John, not when others try to speak them to her."

"I suppose. Okay," Ryan had to concede the point. "What doc.u.ments do we need?"

"We have an extensive dossier file on Alexandrov. I've already called down for it."

So this day would be occupied with creative writing, Ryan decided. It would have been more interesting to look into their economy, but instead he'd have to help do a prospective, a.n.a.lytical obituary for a man whom n.o.body had liked, and who'd probably died intestate anyway.

THE PREPARATION WAS even easier than he'd hoped. Haydock had expected the Russians to be pleased, and, sure enough, one call to his contact in the Ministry of Transportation had done the trick. At ten the next morning, he, Paul Matthews, and a Times photographer would be at the Kiev station to do a story about Soviet state rail and how it compared to British Rail, which needed some help, most Englishmen thought, especially in upper management.

Matthews probably suspected that Haydock was a "six" person, but had never let on, since the spook had been so helpful feeding stories to him. It was the usual way of creating a friendly journalist-even taught at the SIS Academy-but it was officially denied to the American CIA. The United States Congress pa.s.ses the most remarkable and absurd laws to hamstring its intelligence services, the Brit thought, though he was sure the official rules were broken on a daily basis by the people in the field. He'd violated a few of the much looser rules of his own mother service. And had never been caught, of course. Just as he had never been caught working agents on the streets of Moscow....

"HI, TONY." Ed Foley extended a friendly hand to the Moscow correspondent of The New York Times. He wondered if Prince knew how much Ed despised him. But it probably went both ways. "What's happening today?"

"Looking for a statement by the Amba.s.sador on the death of Mikhail Suslov."

Foley laughed. "How about he's glad the nasty old c.o.c.ksucker is dead?"

"Can I quote you on that?" Prince held up his scribble pad.

Time to back up. "Not exactly. I have no instructions in that matter, Tony, and the boss is tied up on other things at the moment. No time loose to see you until later afternoon, I'm afraid."

"Well, I need something, Ed."

" 'Mikhail Suslov was an important member of the Politburo, and an important ideological force in this country, and we regret his untimely pa.s.sing.' That good enough?"

"Your first quote was better and a lot more truthful," the Times correspondent observed.

"You ever meet him?"

Prince nodded. "Couple of times, before and after the Hopkins docs worked on his eyes-"

"Is that for real? I mean, I heard a few stories about it, but nothing substantive." Foley acted the words out.

Prince nodded again. "It was true enough. Gla.s.ses like c.o.ke-bottle bottoms. Courtly gent, I thought. Well-mannered and all that, but there was a little 'tough guy' underneath. I guess he was the high priest of communism, like."

"Oh, took vows of poverty, chast.i.ty, and obedience, did he?"

"You know, there was something of the aesthete about him, like he really was a priest of a sort," Prince said, after a moment's reflection.

"Think so?"

"Yeah, something otherworldly about the guy, like he could see things the rest of us couldn't, like a priest or something. He sure enough believed in communism. Didn't apologize for it, either."

"Stalinist?" Foley asked.

"No, but thirty years ago he would have been. I can see him signing the order to kill somebody. Wouldn't lose any sleep over it-not our Mishka."

"Who's going to replace him?"

"Not sure," Prince admitted. "My contacts say they don't know."

"I thought he was tight with another Mike, that Alexandrov guy," Foley offered, wondering if Prince's contacts were as good as he thought they were. f.u.c.king with Western reporters was a game for the Soviet leaders.h.i.+p. It was different in Was.h.i.+ngton, where a reporter had power to use over politicians. That didn't apply here. The Politburo members didn't fear reporters at all-much the reverse, actually.

Prince's contacts weren't all that great: "Maybe, but I'm not sure. What's the talk here?"

"Haven't been to the lunch room yet, Tony. Haven't heard the gossip yet," Foley parried. You don't really expect a tip from me, do you?

"Well, we'll know by tomorrow or day after."

But it would look good for you if you were the first reporter to make the prediction, and you want me to help you, right? Not is this lifetime, Foley thought, but then he had to reconsider. Prince would not be a particularly valuable friend, but perhaps a usable one, and it never made sense to make enemies for the fun of it. On the other hand, to be too helpful to the guy might suggest either that Foley was a spook or knew who the spooks were, and Tony Prince was one of those guys who liked to talk and tell people how smart he is.... No, it's better for Prince to think I'm dumb, because he'll tell everyone he knows how smart he is and how dumb I am.

The best cover of them all, he'd learned at The Farm, was to be thought a dullard, and while it was a little hurtful to his ego to play that game, it was helpful to the mission, and Ed Foley was a mission-oriented guy. So . . . f.u.c.k Prince and what he thinks. I'm the guy in this city who makes a difference.

"Tell you what, I'll ask around-see what people think."

"Fair enough." Not that I expected anything useful from you, Prince thought a little too loudly.

He was less skillful than he thought at concealing his feelings. He would never be a good poker player, the Chief of Station thought, seeing him out the door. He checked his watch. Lunchtime.

LIKE MOST EUROPEAN stations, Kiev's was a pale yellow-just like a lot of old royal palaces, in fact, as if in the early nineteenth century there had been a continent-wide surplus of mustard, and some king or other had liked the color, and so everyone had painted his palace that way. It never happened in Britain, thank G.o.d, Haydock thought. The ceiling was gla.s.s set in iron frames to let the light in but, as in London, the gla.s.s was rarely, if ever, cleaned, and was instead coated with soot from long-gone steam engines and their coal-fired boiler fires.

But Russians were still Russians. They came to the platform carrying their cheap suitcases, and they were almost never alone, mostly in family groups, even if only one of them was leaving, so that proper goodbyes could be experienced, with pa.s.sionate kisses, male-to-female, and male-to-male, which always struck the Englishman as peculiar. But it was a local custom, and all local customs were peculiar to visitors. The train to Kiev, Belgrade, and Budapest was scheduled to leave at 1:00 P.M. on the dot, and the Russian railroads, like the Moscow Metro, kept to a fairly precise schedule.

Just a few feet away, Paul Matthews was conversing with a representative of the Soviet state railway, talking about the motive power-it was all electric, since Comrade Lenin had decided to bring electricity and eliminate lice all across the USSR. The former, strangely, had proved easier than the latter.

The big VL80T locomotive, two hundred tons of steel, sat at the head of the train on Track Three, with three-day coaches, a dining car, and six international cla.s.s sleepers, plus three mail cars just behind the engine. On the platform were the various conductors and stewards, looking rather surly, as Russians in service-related jobs tended to do.

Haydock was looking around, the photos of the Rabbit and the Bunny seared into his memory. The station clock said it was 12:15, and that tallied with his wrist.w.a.tch. Would the Rabbit show? Haydock usually preferred to be early for a flight or a train, perhaps from a fear of being late left over from his childhood. Whatever the reason, he'd have been here by now for a one o'clock train. But not everyone thought that way, Nigel reminded himself-his wife, for example. He was slightly afraid that she'd deliver the baby in their car on the way to the hospital. It would make a h.e.l.l of a mess, the spook was sure, while Paul Matthews asked his questions, and the photographer shot his Kodak film. Finally . . .

Yes, that was the Rabbit, along with Mrs. Rabbit and the little Bunny. Nigel tapped the shoulder of the photographer.

"This family approaching now. Lovely little girl," he observed, for anyone close enough to listen. The photographer fired off ten frames at once, then switched to another Nikon and fired off ten more. Excellent, Haydock thought. He'd have them printed up before the emba.s.sy closed down for the night, get several printed off to-no, he'd personally hand them to Ed Foley, and make sure the others went by Queen's Messenger-the Brits' rather more dignified term for a diplomatic courier-so they'd be sure to be in Sir Basil's hands before he turned in. He wondered how they would arrange for hiding the fact of the Rabbit's defection-it certainly meant getting cadavers. Distasteful, but possible. He was glad he didn't have to figure out all the details.

As it turned out, the Rabbit family walked within ten feet of him and his reporter friend. No words were exchanged, though the little girl, like little girls everywhere, turned to look at him as she pa.s.sed. He gave her a wink and got a little smile in return. And then they pa.s.sed by, walked up to the attendant, and showed their paper ticket forms.

Matthews kept on asking his questions and got very polite answers from the smiling Russian trainman.

At 12:59:30, the conductor-or at least so Haydock a.s.sumed, from the shabby uniform-walked up and down the side of the train and made sure all the doors but one were secure. He blew a whistle and waved a paddlelike wand to let the engineer know it was time to move off, and at 1:00 on the dot, the horn sounded, and the train started inching away from the platform, gaining speed slowly as it headed west into the capacious railyard, heading for Kiev, Belgrade, and Budapest.

CHAPTER 24.

ROLLING HILLS.

IT WAS AN ADVENTURE for Svetlana most of all, but actually for all of them, since none of the Zaitzev family had ever taken an intercity train. The railyards on the way out were like any railyards: miles of parallel and converging and diverging track packed with box- and flatcars carrying who-knew-what to who-knew-where. The roughness of the tracks only seemed to increase the apparent speed. Oleg and Irina both lit cigarettes and looked with casual interest out the large but grubby windows. The seats were not unreasonable, and Oleg could see how the beds folded down from the overhead.

They had two compartments, in fact, with a connecting door. The paneling was wood-birch, by the look of it-and each compartment, remarkably, had its own lavatory, and so zaichik would have her very own, for the first time in her life, a fact she had yet to appreciate.

Five minutes after leaving the station, the conductor came by for their tickets, which Zaitzev handed over.

"You are State Security?" the conductor asked politely. So the KGB travel office called ahead for me, Zaitzev thought. Good of them. That desk-sitter probably really wanted the pantyhose for his wife.

"I am not permitted to discuss that, comrade," Oleg Ivan'ch answered, with a hard look, making sure that the trainman appreciated his importance. That was one way to ensure proper service. A KGB officer wasn't quite as good as a Politburo member, but it beat the h.e.l.l out of being a mere factory manager. It wasn't so much that people dreaded KGB, but that they just didn't want to go out of their way to come to the agency's adverse notice.

"Yes, of course, comrade. If you need anything, please call for me. Supper is at eighteen hours, and the dining car is the next one forward." He pointed the way.

"How is the food?" Irina decided to ask. Surely, being the wife of a KGB officer had its advantages....

"It is not bad, comrade," the conductor answered politely. "I eat there myself," he added, which said something, Oleg and Irina both thought.

"Thank you, comrade."

"Enjoy your trip with us," he said, and he took his leave.

Oleg and Irina both took out books. Svetlana pressed her nose to the window to watch the world pa.s.sing by, and so the trip began, with only one of them knowing the final destination. Western Russia is mostly a region of rolling plains and distant horizons, not unlike Kansas or eastern Colorado. It was boring to everyone but their zaichik, for whom everything was new and exciting, especially the cattle that were mainly munching on gra.s.s. Cows, she thought, are pretty cool.

BACK IN MOSCOW, Nigel Haydock thanked the bureaucrat from the Transport Ministry for his splendid help, along with Paul Matthews, and then they made their way off to the British Emba.s.sy. The emba.s.sy had a photo lab, and the photographer went that way, while Matthews followed Nigel to his office.

"So, Paul, is there a useful story in that?"

"I suppose there might be. Is it important that there should be?"

"Well, it's valuable to me that the Sovs should think I can bring attention to the glory of their country," Haydock explained with a chuckle.

You are a -6 chap, aren't you? Matthews thought without voicing his suspicion. "I suppose I can generate something. G.o.d knows British Rail needs a boost. Maybe this will encourage the exchequer to send some more money their way."

"Not a bad idea at all," Nigel agreed. It was clear that his guest had his suspicions but had the good grace to keep them quiet, perhaps until a later day, when Nigel was back at a desk in Century House, and they were at a Fleet Street pub.

"You want to see our photos?"

"Would you mind?"

"Not at all. We throw most of them away, as you know."

"Excellent," Haydock announced. Then he reached into the credenza behind his desk. "Drink, Paul?"