Like most of his colleagues, Konovalenko had organized a series of emergency exits over the years through which he could escape if necessary from a crisis situation. He had built up a reserve of foreign currency, and had a variety of identities at his disposal in the form of passports and other documents. He also had a strong network of contacts in strategically important positions in Aeroflot, the customs authorities, and the foreign service. Anybody belonging to the nomenklatura was like a member of a secret society. They were there to help each other, and as a group could guarantee that their way of life would not give way beneath them. Or so they thought, until the unthinkable collapse actually happened.
Toward the end, just before he fled, everything happened very quickly. He contacted Jan Kleyn, who was a liaison officer for the KGB and the South African intelligence service. They had met when Konovalenko was visiting the Moscow station in Nairobi-his first trip to the African continent, in fact. Jan Kleyn made it very clear that Konovalenko’s services could be useful to him and his country. He filled Konovalenko’s head with visions of immigration and a comfortable future.
But that would take time. Konovalenko needed an intermediate port of call after leaving the Soviet Union. He decided on Sweden. Several colleagues had recommended it. Apart from the high standard of living, it was easy to cross the borders, and at least as easy to keep out of the public eye; to be completely anonymous, if that was what you wanted. There was also a growing colony of Russians, many of them criminals, organized into gangs, that had started to operate in Sweden. They were often the first of the rats to leave the sinking ship, rather than the last. Konovalenko knew he would be able to benefit from these people. The KGB had always had excellent relations with the Russian criminal classes. Now they could be mutually helpful even in exile.
He got out of the car, and noted that there were blotches on the face of even this country, which was supposed to be an ideal model. The gloomy housing estate reminded him of both Leningrad and Berlin. It looked like future decay was already built into the facades. And yet he could see that Vladimir Rykoff and his wife Tania had done the right thing when they settled in Hallunda. They could live here in the anonymity they desired.
That I desire, he thought, correcting himself.
When he first came to Sweden, he used Rykoff to help him settle in quickly. Rykoff had been living in Stockholm since the beginning of the eighties. He had shot a KGB colonel in Kiev by mistake and fled the country. Because he had a dark complexion and looked like an Arab, he traveled as a Persian refugee and was rapidly granted refugee status, even though he did not speak a word of Persian. When he eventually received Swedish citizenship, he took back his real name, Rykoff. He was only an Iranian when he dealt with the Swedish authorities. In order to support himself and his supposedly Iranian wife, he carried out a few simple bank robberies while he was still living in a refugee camp near Flen. This produced a fair amount of capital to start out with. It also occurred to him that he could earn money by setting up a settlement service for other Russian immigrants who were making their way to Sweden, more or less legally, in increasing numbers. His somewhat unorthodox travel agency soon became well known, and there were times when he had more people than he could really cope with. He had various representatives of the Swedish authorities on his payroll, including at times people in the immigration office, and it all helped to give the agency the reputation of being efficient and thorough. He was sometimes irritated by the fact that it was so hard to bribe Swedish civil servants. But he generally managed it eventually, if he was careful how he went about it. Rykoff had also established the much appreciated custom of providing all new arrivals with a genuine Russian dinner in his apartment at Hallunda.
It did not take Konovalenko long to grasp that behind the hard exterior, Rykoff was in fact a weak character and easily led. When Konovalenko made a pass at his wife and she proved to be far from unwilling, he soon had Rykoff where he wanted him. Konovalenko arranged his life so that Rykoff did all the mundane legwork, all the boring routine assignments.
When Jan Kleyn contacted him and offered him the job of taking care of an African contract killer who was to carry out an important assassination in South Africa, it was Rykoff who saw to all the practical arrangements. It was Rykoff who rented the house in Skane, fixed the cars, and brought in the food supply. He dealt with the forgers and the weapon Konovalenko managed to smuggle out of St. Petersburg.
Konovalenko knew Rykoff had another virtue.
He never hesitated to kill, if necessary.
Konovalenko locked the car, picked up his bag, and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. He had a key, but he rang the doorbell instead. The signal was simple, a sort of coded version of the “Internationale.”
Tania opened the door. She stared at him in surprise when she saw no sign of Victor Mabasha.
“You’re here already?” she said. “Where’s the African?”
“Is Vladimir in?” asked Konovalenko, without bothering to answer.
He handed her his bag and stepped inside the apartment. It had four rooms and was furnished with expensive leather armchairs, a marble table, and the last word in hi-fi and video equipment. It was all very tasteless, and Konovalenko did not like living there. Right now, though, he had no alternative.
Vladimir emerged from the bedroom dressed in a silk robe. Unlike Tania, who was so slim, Vladimir Rykoff looked as if he’d been given an order to get fat-an order he’d been delighted to receive.
Tania prepared a simple meal and put a bottle of vodka on the table. Konovalenko told them as much as he thought they needed to know. But he said nothing about the woman he had been forced to kill.
The most important thing was that Victor Mabasha had suffered a mysterious breakdown. Now he was at large somewhere in Sweden, and had to be liquidated immediately.
“Why didn’t you do it in Skane?” asked Vladimir.
“There were certain difficulties,” Konovalenko replied.
Neither Vladimir nor Tania asked any more questions.
While he was driving to Stockholm, Konovalenko had thought carefully about what had happened, and what needed to happen now. It dawned on him that Victor Mabasha had only one possibility of leaving the country.
He would have to find Konovalenko. Konovalenko was the one with the passports and tickets; he was the one who could supply him with money.
Victor Mabasha would most probably make his way to Stockholm. He was probably there already. Konovalenko and Rykoff would be ready to receive him.
Konovalenko drank a few glasses of vodka. But he was careful not to get drunk. Even if that was what he most wanted to do right now, he had an important job to do first.
He had to call Jan Kleyn on the Pretoria telephone number he was only allowed to use in extreme cases of necessity.
“Go into the bedroom,” he said to Tania and Vladimir. “Close the door and switch the radio on. I have to make a telephone call, and I don’t want to be disturbed.”
He knew that both Tania and Vladimir would listen in if they had the chance and he wanted none of that. He needed to inform Jan Kleyn about the woman he had been forced to kill.
That would give him the perfect reason to imply that Victor Mabasha’s breakdown was in fact something positive. It would be obvious that it was entirely thanks to Konovalenko that the man’s weakness had been exposed before it was too late.
Killing the woman could also provide him with another benefit. It would be clear to Jan Kleyn, if he did not know already, that Konovalenko was absolutely ruthless.