Until Natalia, and the way she rubbed off the acquired skin, wearing his identity away as she made him a cuckold, a jealous, suspicious, agonised fool whose work suffered, whose reputation began to decline.
He brushed aside the thought.
Ten photographs. Ten case-histories.
He had selected them carefully, only removing a face from the wall after much deliberation, cross-referencing in the files that had come from the cheap briefcase as from a cornucopia. Endless riches of detail; a ceaseless diet of collected observation. Six military men. Two members of the Politburo. Two members of the Secretariat. Not all the suspicious ones, just those best placed. Samples, really. If nothing transpired, then others…
Then that, too, seemed complete, and he blenched before the mass of documentation stretching back over twelve months. He sat in his chair, looking at a discarded photograph that had slipped from the arm. He picked it up, and smiled. A dead man; he had been the first to come off the wall, with a laugh at the hidebound attitude that included corpses in the ranks of the suspected.
Twelve months of detail — periods of leave, all journeys within the Soviet Union or countries of the Warsaw Pact; all committees, all social engagements, and contacts. Sexual indulgences. Digests of tape-recordings; contacts leading back to the old man who had spoken over the tapped phone of Group 1917. Private habits, reading material, exercise of the bowels, the dog, the digestion; holidays; second homes, financial records…
He had baulked at it, for the moment. Instead, he let his mind assume another tangent. The couriers.
For there had to be couriers. There could be no written or recorded messages or instructions. Word of mouth. Had it not been for Ossipov, then he would have concluded that the cell was tight-knit; after all, to achieve a coup, sudden and certain, would take only troops stationed in the Moscow Military District; no need to include Ossipov. Yet he was the one who had dodged his tail — been aware of it in the first place. Far East, based on HQ, Khabarovsk. Why was he necessary?
The local KGB Resident had been altered, but as yet there was no report. It was one-horse outfits, in the east. Like frontier lawmen in American films, he thought. Far East was a military business, altogether. And suitably masked from heavy surveillance, therefore.
Couriers?
Civil servants, GRU personnel — back to the problem of subversion. Not soldiers, no real freedom of movement there. Not the senior officers, too attractive to the magnet of surveillance, they. Someone, some group — able to move freely?
Which was why his soldiers on the wall all came from different military districts — in their grainy blow-ups which savoured of secrecy and the power of unseen watchers. Odessa, Kiev, Central Asian, Siberian…
They might tell him something about the methods of communication, if they had anything at all to tell.
Substitutes? Still no ident on the Ossipov-substitute, that infuriating figure whose dead hand he had held. He could still feel the thrill of the cold thin wire, running into the sleeve of the black overcoat with the fur collar. Were there others?
It meant going back to the photographs — he would need his team, and here in the flesh not at the other end of a telephone, to do the same thing as he had done with General Ossipov.
And why Finland? Why Vrubel, who was dead?
He wanted to go to Finland. For whole minutes, the idea possessed him with an impatience great as that of any child. He knew that someone would be checking; he wanted it to be himself, or one of his team. The egotism of the small room, the dusty light of it and the work there, was strong. Why Vrubel? Was he a courier?
The doorbell rang, startling him. Automatically, he looked at his watch. Four o'clock. In the afternoon? He had been staring at a picture of Marshal Praporovich, just about to step into a Moscow taxi. He had no idea how it came to be in his hand, nor the cigarette he had been absently smoking.
He got up as the bell summoned him again. Reluctant, he felt, then quickly aware of the dishevelled state of his appearance. He locked the door of the small study behind him, and went out into the narrow hallway.
Mihail Pyotravich Gorochenko stood on the doorstep, snow glistening as it melted on his shoulders. Vorontsyev's face immediately creased into a smile of welcome.
'Mihail Pyotravich — how wonderful to see you!' The two of them embraced, the younger man feeling the rough skin against his cheeks, the paternal fervency of the old man's kisses. Then he ushered him into the lounge — sparsely and unconcernedly furnished from some warehouse which stocked furniture of a standard kind for KGB apartments. Gorochenko sat himself near the electric fire, switching it on — then he glanced quizzically at Vorontsyev, sensing that his adopted son had not inhabited the frosty lounge that day.
'Busy, Alexei?' he asked as Vorontsyev poured vodka for them both, then set the bottle between them on a low table, scuffed with storage, nicked with wear. There were rings from wet glasses on it that he had not polished away.
Voronstyev glanced at the locked door, wanted to tell the old man, but said, 'A bit. There's no leave, you know!' He laughed. The old man nodded sagely, and downed the vodka. Vorontsyev refilled the glass.
The Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union watched his face carefully, as if for signs of pain or age.
'I'm sorry I have not been to see you earlier, Alexei, my boy,' he said. 'Politburo business — things are buzzing…' Vorontsyev felt a twinge of shame at his own reluctance to confide. It was a habit he automatically obeyed. And the old man expected it. 'You were badly hurt?'
'No — father.' Vorontsyev enjoyed the ease with which he used the word these days. Not so well, perhaps, when the old man periodically tried to patch things up between himself and Natalia — he wondered whether the old man would use the visit as an excuse to do so again — but today, with a lot of preliminary work done, he could relax into an older familiarity. He smiled, and the old man's bright blue eyes smiled back at him from the strong, square face.
He leaned over and patted his thigh. 'Good. Just bruises, the doctor told me. I rang the hospital yesterday. Comes of having a thick skull — like your father!' They laughed, recalling the same dead man. No hint of a gap between them because of their lack of propinquity.
Gorochenko lit a cigarette, and expelled a blue funnel of smoke towards he ceiling. Then he said, 'It's a pity you haven't a woman about the place, to help you get well…' He held up his hand as Vorontsyev's face puckered with displeasure. 'Oh, I know what you are going to say. I meant her.' As if his mind turned a hunched, protective shoulder towards the old man, Vorontsyev said. 'I don't want to discuss my wife — father!' This time the word was a plea.
'No, no. I have no wish to give you pain, my boy. But — you were once so happy, eh? And — Natalia has been to see me — yes. Little Natasha who went so far away from you. She came to me, and told me about — the other night.'
It was as if his ribs protested; Vorontsyev drew a sharp breath of pain.
'What?'
'Yes, my boy. Today. This morning, she called to see me at the Ministry. A private interview.'
'What for?' Vorontsyev winced with suspicion.
'She — asked me, to arrange an interview. She wants to talk to you.'