When it was just a speck, Boris whistled, and Joe and Luba climbed into view within seconds. Peter threw the tools into the trunk, kicked the new tire, and got into the car with the others. Safcek drove north two hundred yards past a sign that read, “Unauthorized personnel not admitted.” He noted the side road leading to the main gate, made a U-turn, and began the return trip to the sanctuary of the mosque. He warned Boris and Peter to keep low in case the police came back along the same road, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. In twenty minutes, the car was swallowed up in the traffic of Tashkent, and the members of Operation Scratch resumed their roles as fascinated tourists in the heart of Soviet Central Asia.
Inside the laser complex, Professor Anatoly Serkin, now the acting director, finished checking data on the weapon after the test run. His fellow scientists continued to avoid discussion with him about the abduction of Andrei Parchuk as he wandered through his last inspections. It had been that way all day. A heavy, almost mournful silence pervaded the laboratory area.
At 5:15 P.M., Serkin went home for a brief, quiet supper with Nadia and Galina. He spoke little, and only Galina’s insistence on playing with a toy roused him to any enthusiasm. He finally tucked her into bed and joined his wife for coffee on the porch. Sensing his deep depression, Nadia tried to get him to talk about Parchuk’s kidnapping. She put her arms about his neck and whispered tenderly to him, but he pushed her away abruptly.
“Nadia, Parchuk is a dead man.” There was despair in his voice. “When State Security gets its hands on you, you’re already at the grave. And how he looked when they drove off! That was just a sample.”
She broke down at the remembrance of his description. Serkin stroked her hair softly.
“Just pray for him, Nadia. Pray for his soul.”
Serkin could not continue. He stumbled off the porch and back down the road to his office.
In the radio room at Peshawar, Karl Richter had time on his hands. Richter was now only a bystander. He had given Safcek and the others all the information the United States intelligence community had at its disposal. He had been satisfied that no other team had ever gone on an assignment with such a wealth of hard facts about the enemy. Yet he was fearful for the people he had seen leave by helicopter. That they could actually accomplish a mission so hazardous deep inside the Soviet Union was almost inconceivable. Richter had watched Joe Safcek during the briefings and been completely impressed with the man’s calm professionalism. At times, he found himself believing that Safcek and his group had a chance. Then he would remember Grigor Rudenko, who defied the odds for years but finally was unmasked and destroyed. And Joe Safcek was facing obstacles far more formidable than Grigor had faced. Richter was convinced the Russians would trap him as they had trapped Grigor, who was now probably buried in an unmarked grave.
Grigor Rudenko lay on his cot at Lubianka. His mouth was a constant aching void, crusted with blood, and oozing pus from infected wounds in the gum. But he was alive by grace of his inquisitors. In the past twenty-four hours, they had brought him to the interrogation room twice and forced more sodium pentothal into his arm, and Grigor had dreamed more beautiful dreams and told the man in the white coat about his contacts with the British Embassy and the materials he had passed to American intelligence for many years and about a man named Karl Richter who was his best friend and original espionage drop. The interrogators were fascinated with his long rambling stories and intended to keep him alive to dredge every detail of his Jekyll and Hyde existence from him. They were ecstatic at having found a master spy in their midst.
They even began to feed him a light soup, which he forced past his torn lips and swallowed gratefully. A nurse came to his cell and bathed his tortured body with a cooling sponge. In his waking moments. Grigor thought about his wife and children. In his induced dreams, he always reverted to his carefree boyhood in the United States. There Grigor could laugh and relax while he confessed heinous crimes against the Soviet state.
Now, at 1 P.M., Moscow time, on the afternoon of September 13, they came for him again. The man in the white coat was waiting in the antiseptic hospital room, but he had no needle in his hand. Vassili Baranov, deputy director of the state security police, was there too, and he nodded pleasantly to Rudenko, who refused to acknowledge him. Baranov told Rudenko to sit on a chair in the corner. A bright light was switched on over his head, and it shone directly into his battered face. Rudenko sat there for fifteen minutes, wondering when his interrogation would begin.
Then the door opened, and two secret police officers entered, supporting a man between them. Rudenko squinted to recognize him. But the light blinded him. Baranov spoke sharply, and the man was brought directly in front of Grigor, who could see that the victim had a broken lower jaw, which hung loosely away from his face. Blood masked his mouth.
“Grigor, this is your old friend, Parchuk.”
Rudenko stared into the man’s terror-stricken eyes.
“He’s my wife’s uncle. Why is he here?” Rudenko mumbled.
Parchuk was bent forward, his head down. One of the secret policemen tapped him lightly on the broken jaw, and the old man groaned loudly and raised his head to stare at the form under the light. Parchuk began to wail. Baranov ran to him and screamed: “Stop this, Parchuk. Look at him and see what stubbornness gets you.”
The old professor sobbed: “Grigor, Grigor, I am so sorry I did this to you.”
Baranov said: “That’s all I wanted to know.” He took his pistol and placed the barrel in the professor’s right ear.
“Say good-bye to Grigor, traitor.” As the professor tried to swing away from the gun, Baranov pressed the trigger, and a bullet ripped into Parchuk’s head. He crumpled into a heap.
Grigor Rudenko stared at the body, but felt too numb to utter a sound. Baranov ordered the corpse taken out and said calmly to Rudenko, “Let’s you and I have another chat.” He led Grigor to the table where the man in the white coat waited with the needle.
Grigor Rudenko was listening again to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. He now looked forward to his visits to the antiseptic white room at the end of the hall because he could hear his favorite ballet in the brief intervals when he was not under the influence of sodium pentothal. That pleasure combined with his visits to Sheila and Karl during his reveries made Grigor eagerly anticipate the moments when Baranov summoned him for friendly chats.
As Dr. Senski plunged the needle into his vein, Grigor tried to keep time to the music with his hand but he floated slowly away from Lubianka.
Baranov’s voice was calm and quite pleasant.
“Grigor, I never mentioned this before, but did you ever have any dealings with other embassies in Moscow?”
Karl Richter interrupted Baranov, and Grigor was happy. “Grigor, you drive, and I’ll be in the back seat with Maureen. And don’t keep turning around with wisecracks.”
“What about the French, Grigor?”
“I knew Maurice Debran there very well.”
“Hasn’t he been transferred back to Paris?”
“Stop driving so fast, Grigor. You’ll kill us all.” Sheila was very nervous but suddenly laughed gaily when Grigor pulled into the lovers’ lane near the lake.
“Yes, he went back last Sunday.”
“Did you see him off?”
“No, but I was at his apartment on Saturday night.”
“Did you give him anything?”
Grigor kissed Sheila’s lips. Her eyes were closed and her honey-colored hair tickled his nose.