“You want me to find the names?”
“We want you to tell us how successful Pork has been. If there are any names, we want them.”
“That’s not possible,” Letsukov said.
“Your office deals with these things, yes or no?”
“Listen,” Letsukov put down his vodka, “we would have an account of every examination. The Tallinn report is no doubt in the office at this moment.”
“So?”
“But I no longer deal with Northwestern regions. My area has just changed to the Caucasus.”
“You can still get that report.”
“You don’t understand. It would mean breaking into a file cabinet.”
“So what?”
“Suspicion would immediately fall on someone in the office.”
The Estonian looked at Letsukov with contempt. “I told them,” he said, “I told them in Leningrad, that you’d be one of two things, a Bureau spy or a weak-kneed coward. What do I care if suspicion falls on you?” His voice was menacing. “What’s your career against fifty, sixty, a hundred arrests in Estonia?”
Letsukov sat on the side of the bed looking into the sharp-cut lines of the man’s face.
“When I was with the Bureau,” the Estonian said, “we used to break in wherever we wanted to. Other government departments as often as not. Sometimes we’d set a fire going and with any luck burn the place down. You do that Letsukov and your department head is going to think it’s a KGB job. He’ll ask them, they’ll deny it. He won’t believe them, they won’t believe him. Everything gets so mixed up, believe me, that it’d take a spider to unravel the web. And a hundred Estonians go underground, with any luck, just in time. You’ll do it, Letsukov, because if you’re what you say you are, you don’t really have a choice.”
Letsukov finished his vodka. “Yes, I’ll do it. Give me a week.”
“A week, you bastard? Did you take a week in Paris? By that time Pork’s men could be knocking on the doors in the middle of the night.”
When Carole arrived back at her apartment Harriet Bennerman was sitting on the sofa in the living room. Tom Yates was sitting opposite her in an armchair but his cigarette stubs were mixed with hers in the ashtray next to her.
“You’re back early,” her husband said as Carole took off her coat. “I thought Architectural Club meetings went on into the small hours.”
“Only if David Butler invites us back. He had work to do later this evening.”
“How is David?” Harriet asked. “I haven’t seen him for ages.”
“He’s fine,” Carole said. “Matter of fact, he was talking about inviting you and Jack over to one of his Armenian meals. Us too,” she added to her husband.
“I can’t take fat guys flouncing around in caftans,” Tom Yates said.
Harriet stood up. “I’d better be on my way, Tom. I’ll get that typed up by the time your conference is through tomorrow. ’Night, Carole.”
“See you, Harriet,” Carole said and walked into the bedroom. She stood for a moment looking at the neatly made bed. The blankets and coverlet were folded under in a style known as hospital corners. But she could have sworn that their rather slapdash Ukrainian maid had never done a hospital corner in her life. She had no way of telling how she would have felt if she had not been so miserable about Letsukov. She let her imagination dwell for a few moments on the picture of Harriet’s fat arms encircling her husband’s neck, drawing him down onto her vast pneumatic breasts, but the idea was more ridiculous than painful to her. And in any case, she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps the maid had been doing hospital corners ever since they had arrived in Moscow.
She took a shower, swallowed a sleeping pill and got into bed. Ten minutes later when her husband came into the bedroom she was asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
At five minutes past five the next evening, Letsukov stood at his office window overlooking the Ulitza Razina. The Examination Department of the Nationalities Ministry, Trade Union Section, had been moved from its former eighteenth-century splendor and now occupied the sixth and seventh floors of a nine-floor block whose cracking walls and window frames parting from the surrounding plaster proclaimed it as being of recent construction.
In the next room he could hear the busy tapping of his secretary’s heels as she crossed and recrossed the office, locking files and feeding papers into the shredding chute. He had taken his coat from the hook in the outer office while she was in the cloakroom and he was banking on her assumption that he had already gone home.
He could hear her clearly, humming to herself. Then she crossed the room for the last time and locked the connecting door between their offices. So far so good.
He waited until he heard her heels pass along the corridor outside, waited even until he heard the lift door slam. Then he took his own keys and let himself into the outer office.
Given the Department’s security grading the technical constraints were not great. There was no electronic alarm system. The file cabinets were sturdy but by no means impossible to pry open. The most effective security element was the key system. By this the most important files could only be opened by the Department head and the official dealing with that subject. Thus although Letsukov dealt with KGB reports on Free Trade Union activities, his area (Southern Republics) excluded him from the Estonian file. The metal cabinet would have to be broken open.
The only real immediate risk was the security patrol. He knew that the three men comprising it were, as often as not during the day, to be found drinking kvas in their office on the floor below. But he had no idea how conscientious they were in the execution of their duties after the staff had left.
He went to the door leading into the corridor, unlocked it and opened it an inch or two. He could see the whole length of the dusty alley between the lines of locked doors. No one. He closed and relocked the door and took a strong pair of pliers from his pocket.
He knew the Estonian file well. The year before he could have unlocked it and copied out the names he wanted. There would have been no possibility then of detection.
He inserted one end of the pliers into the lock and levered. The soft metal around the lock opening buckled. He increased the pressure. Something snapped and fell down inside the cabinet. Concentrating on the noise within he had forgotten the danger from noise outside. He went back to the office door. It was of thin hardboard construction. He could hear nothing.
Returning to the cabinet he took the handle and pulled. The lock now rattled inside and the file drawer opened a fraction. He pushed the head of the pliers into the gap and levered hard. The lock snapped and the file drawer slid open. Estonia — security — reports, the pink cardboard tab read. He lifted out the folder and opened it to the latest filing. There was the report signed by General Avgust Pork, KGB, Tallinn. One prisoner only had given information, three names and details of a Friday-night factory meeting. General Pork intended to move against the factory meeting if it was still to be held, in the hope of a bigger bag of dissidents. After the meeting had been raided he would arrest the three men. Any action against them any earlier would obviously have the effect of canceling the meeting.
Friday, two days’ time. Three men saved. Only three.
A key turned in the lock. Letsukov heard the guard sergeant’s cough as the door opened.
Red-faced, the security man stood coughing into a handkerchief. “Sorry, Comrade Letsukov,” he said, wheezing and wiping his watery eyes. “It’s bronchitis the doctor says. Gave me a very severe warning last time I saw him.”
The coughing began again and, unable to speak, the guard made an awkward apologetic bow and stepped back into the corridor, closing the door behind him.