Jake Maroc - Shan Part 5

He was surrounded by six plainclothes KGB operatives. Daniella's men. Despite the cold she had insisted they not wear their greatcoats. "Your concealed armament will be no good to you beneath all that padding, if an emergency should arise," she had told them at the briefing this afternoon.

The blue-coated policemen parted like the Red Sea as he approached. "You have the route down," Daniella said, and Alexei, hands on the steering wheel, noted the tension in her voice.

"Yes, Comrade General," he said formally.

The group had stopped. One of Daniella's men reached forward to pull open the door beside her. Then Oleg Maluta was climbing into the warmth of the limousine's interior.

"Greetings, Comrade General." His voice was like sandpaper over cement.

"Comrade." Daniella was aware of the heavy smells of tobacco and sweat. It was work sweat, the smell of a mover and shaker after a long day of complex negotiations.

Alexei put the Chaika into gear.

"A drink," Maluta said.

He is not even civil, Daniella thought as she reached out a bottle of Azerbaijani brandy. As she poured, she remembered that Yuri Lantin's favorite liquor had been Starka, aged vodka. That was how she had killed him: overdosed his nightcap with his own sleeping pills, then put his head in the oven to make it look like suicide. In so doing, she had taken the late unlamented Anatoly Karpov's place as head of the First Chief Directorate and, consolidating her power, had taken Yuri Lantin's spot in the Politburo. She was the first woman to rise so high in the Soviet hierarchy.

Oleg Maluta could destroy all that with one wave of his hand.

He had an oval face. It was not the visage of a Muskovite. Rather he had the odd, almost almond eyes, the fiat planular cheeks of a Mongol. His salt-and-pepper hair was shaved close to his scalp on the sides. The bald patch on the back of his head gave him a benign aspect, to those who had had no real contact with him. To such an ignorant eye he might be an honored chess master, his scheming mind turned to essentially harmless pursuits.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Maluta accepted the gla.s.s from Daniella, downed three fingers of the fiery stuff at once. His uptilted head revealed his prominent adam's apple, bobbing as he swallowed. He handed her the empty gla.s.s, wiped his lips with the edge of a yellowed forefinger. He turned his head to watch the nighttime parade by him, as if it were there for his benefit alone.

Following Daniella's instructions, Alexei veered off the Kas.h.i.+ra Highway in order to take the streets that banded the Moskva River. Maluta loved the river almost as much, Daniella suspected, as he loved the ballet. His apartment overlooked the river; his offices were within one of the stuffy encrusted Kremlin towers from whose windows he could keep the Moskva in sight.

"The moonlight looks fine on the water," he said now as he shook out an unfiltered Camel. He did not offer her one, which was just as well. Lantin had made her smoke and she had detested it. Now the stench nauseated her, a.s.sociated in her mind with the cloying odor of cooking gas.

"It is because of the ice," she said.

They were running along the embankment. The gnarled and twisted shadows of the bare tree branches were like an old man's fingers stretched across the Moskva's silver expanse.

The Chaika's interior was filled with smoke. Daniella opened the window on her side a sliver.

"How was Leningrad?" she said now, swallowing hard to rid her throat of the acrid smoke.

"Stultifying," Maluta said. He continued to stare at his beloved Moskva. As they streaked toward the city he sat turned partially away from her, staring intently out the tinted window.

"Comrade, may I ask"

But his nicotine-stained hand was waving her words aside. "I am hungry." It was a rebuff, pure and simple. Because I am a woman, Daniella wondered, or is it something else, something I'm unaware of? "As I digest my supper," he continued, "you will digest my words."

Sitting next to Oleg Maluta, Daniella decided, was akin to coming into contact with a dark star. The sensation of negative energy was enormous. After ten minutes in his presence she felt chilled and drained. She began to fight that feeling, knowing that she would need all her mental acuity this night.

Daniella had instructed Alexei to make reservations at Rossia on the Moskvoretskaya Embankment. The hotel had nine restaurants. Daniella often went to the one in the bas.e.m.e.nt because it boasted the best dance orchestra. The restaurant they went to now was on the twenty-first floor. It had a most spectacular view of the Kremlin and the green, terra-cotta and yellow onion domes of St. Basil's, She thought this sight would please Maluta, and she was not disappointed.

"How splendid Moscow looks," he said as they were seated at the best window table. "Clean and sparkling," He ordered vodka and zakuski: two kinds of Caspian caviar, cold sturgeon in aspic, pate. He did not bother to ask what she would like.

Daniella closed her eyes; she thought of her wei qi board. Whenever she could, she played the ancient Chinese board game that the j.a.panese knew as go. It was said that a player's strategy in wei qi was a mirror of his or her personal philosophy.

She wondered why Maluta bothered to play these games with her. Plainly, he detested her, as he seemed to hate all women. Certainly, he resented her promotion into the sanctum sanctorum of male power: the Politburo.

The liquor came almost immediately, yet another demonstration of Oleg Maluta's power. He had chosen a pertsovka, one of Daniella's winter favorites. The hot peppers gave the vodka a delicious, soul-warming kick.

Maluta waited until the appetizer tray had been set before them. He made no move to eat though he had told her he was hungry.

"We must know what Kam Sang is all about."

Said without preamble, what he said was a shock. Kam Sang was the project in China's Guangdong province that she had been trying to penetrate for almost a year without success. Two men knew its secret: s.h.i.+ Zilin and his son, Jake Maroc. Why was Oleg Maluta suddenly interested in Kam Sang? Daniella did not trust him. If he needed Kam Sang's secret, that meant that he would make certain that she was out of it when it came time to hand out the medals. Kam Sang's secret could provide undreamed of power to Daniella or Maluta. But not to both.

"That will be most difficult to do," Daniella said carefully.

"It must be done, Comrade General." Maluta's eyes were blazing. "I mean to become the successor to Fyodor Leninin." He was referring to Fyodor Leninin Genachev, Soviet leader, head of the Communist Party. "Without the power Kam Sang's secret will bring me, it will be next to impossible. With friends like Reztsov and Carelin inside the Politburo one cannot fart in bed without Genachev knowing." Carelin. Had Maluta another reason from bringing up that name? She tried slow breathing. She had been right. What mad scheme was he hatching? Whatever it was, he meant to enmesh her in it. Her mind was reeling. She fought to remain calm.

"You should have been there, Comrade General. In Leningrad. You should have seen Genachev. He walked through the crowds, smiling and calling out to them. *I am close to you now,' he said. *I am here to aid you, to listen to your problems, and to solve them. I am here to begin a new Russia!' " Maluta took a deep breath. His face was that of one who had just smelled rotting flesh.

"When I was a young man, I saw Nikita Khrushchev. He appeared in public all over Russia. He lapped up the adulation of the crowds, visibility affected him like a drug. He even went to America, to Disneyland. I thought of him as a kind of hero. Do you understand? A man of vision, who had set his sights on affairs outside the Soviet Union.

"Until one day I heard my father speaking. He was vilifying Khrushchev. *This personality cult that Khrushchev spends so much time building is a clear and present danger,' he said. *Khrushchev spends too much time on Khrushchev. He apes the power and prestige of the American President, Kennedy. Theirs is a war not of ideology, not of nations. But of egos.' "

Maluta began to put food into his mouth, because in Russia one did not drink vodka without eating; it was taken as a sign of drunkenness. "For two days after that I locked myself in my room. I did not eat, I did not see anyone. All I thought about was Khrushchev and what my father said about him. In time, I came to understand that he was right. Khrushchev was driven by his egoa dangerous att.i.tude for the leader of all the Russias."

She took a deep breath. "Do you really think that this talk is wise, Comrade?"

Maluta's head snapped around. He was like a falcon who had found its prey flying calmly a half mile below. Daniella felt transfixed by his terrible Medusa's gaze. A thin line of sweat trickled down the indentation of her spine, and she thought, I am terrified of this man. She fought it, knowing with an absolute certainty that that very fear could kill her.

"Are you questioning my judgment, Comrade General?" His heavy emphasis on her t.i.tle made it clear that he had no respect for it, And again she thought, Is it because I am a woman?

"No, Comrade." It was a trial to keep her voice firm and sure. "I am merely questioning the circ.u.mstances. Out here"

"Here there is noise, so much of it that no microphone could possibly pick up our conversation." He continued to stare her down. "Are you certain that this is the reason you are uneasy?"

She kept her head still. "What do you mean?"

Maluta popped another appetizer into his mouth, and shrugged. "The people love him. Genachev is fifty-five, young by the standards of the Kremlin. He shows them energy and they respond. He announces that he will inst.i.tute sweeping changes in the agricultural system. The economythe economy. It is all he speechifies about. A four percent growth rate, without any military cutbacks, is what he promises the people. The people, Comrade General. Then he brings his wife and daughter to parades, to official functions. At the Moscow Art Theater, the three of them arrive and are seated in the stalls along with everybody else, instead of the balcony, the traditional spot."

He reached inside his suit and pulled out several glossy pages. "Have you seen this?"

Daniella took the cover and article from the current edition of Time. She saw the Genachevs on the cover, a rich color photo of the three of them smiling happily at some official function, ecstatic crowds in the background. "First Family, Soviet Style," the caption read. She handed it back to Maluta without opening it, "There's very little s.p.a.ce in which to maneuver," he said, putting the magazine away. He handled it as if he suspected it of being contaminated. "Each day this new-style leader of ours usurps more and more power. Each day his personality cult grows in stature. Genachev turns to the internal side of Soviet politics without an understanding of what it will take to get this country moving again. Words to the people will not make a four percent net increase in the economy.

"But it has taken him away from the international arena. Genachev ignores the China threat, the Afghan war. We have suffered severe and I am afraid almost irreparable loss of prestige in Africa after a decade of solid and consistent gains. We have lost control of South America and all efforts to bring Southeast Asia into line have failed.

"Yet what is Genachev spending his time on? Getting close to the people, talking to the farmers, rea.s.suring them that their time of trial is at an end." He snorted. "Soon we will have farm subsidies, just like in America."

Maluta's hand curled into a fist, white with tension. "It is enough! When you deliver to me Kam Sang's secrets, I will prove to the entire Politburo the truth of what I have been saying. It is time to regain control over Africa, over South and Central America. It is time for the Soviet Union to push forward across the globe. It is time for us to be more aggressive abroad, rather than attempting to get our out-of-date farm collectives to deliver more produce.

"But as long as Genachev holds sway, no other voice in the Politburo amounts to anything."

Wanting to defuse him, at least temporarily, she gestured. "Shall we eat, Comrade? I'm starving."

They ate in silence for a time but she could see that Maluta's attention was not on his food.

"Of course," she said, after the remains of the zakuski had been cleared away, "you always have another option. You could strike an alliance with Genachev, use a little give and take. Even perhaps persuade him to use you as his adviser on international affairs."

Maluta said nothing but she could tell by his expression that his mind was turning over what she had said. He spread his hands, shrugged. "I cannot see how Comrade Genachev could afford to take any kind of advice from me. Mikhail Carelin is his guru. Carelin: the man with no face. Isn't that how he's known?"

"In some circles," she said. Thinking about wei qi, strategy. Trapping Oleg Maluta. She thought about being able to implicate him in a plot to a.s.sa.s.sinate Genachev, ama.s.sing evidence; irrefutable evidence that would sentence him to immediate execution.

"Carelin. He's egoless, they say. Content to remain in the background, whispering in Genachev's ear. Perhaps Genachev's idiocies are in reality Carelin's. You see? It's hard to determine what's what between them."

Slowly, slowly, she thought, her heart hammering. "Suppose Carelin himself recommended that Genachev elevate you to adviser status.

Maluta tapped the center of his liver-colored lips with a forefinger. He took out a Camel and lit it. Daniella concealed her disgust.

"Now this is interesting, Comrade General." There was a certain expression on his face, and with dawning understanding she felt appalled. It was a smile but the kind of smile that was more a rictus, as if he did not have full control over his facial muscles. "But of course you are joking. Why should Carelin cede any of his power to me?" "Because I'll ask him to."

"Oho, and I suppose just like that he will comply."

Daniella put down her teacup. "Perhaps six weeks ago Mikhail Carelin phoned me. He invited me to dinner. I a.s.sumed it had to do with some Politburo lobbying. As the most recent member, I am perhaps perceived to be more vulnerable to persuasion on certain issues.

"He took me to Russkaya Izba, a surprise since it is somewhat out of the wayforty minutes from the center of town. Very romantic. Also to my surprise there was no talk of business. Instead, we spoke of small things: our backgrounds, childhood memories and the like. We were getting to know one another."

"Carelin asked you out on a date?"

"A date," Daniella confirmed. "That was it exactly. He wants to see me again."

Maluta thought of Carelin's wife, squat and dumpy, their two daughters, built in their mother's image. He grunted. "What is the American phrase? *Quiet waters run deep'?"

"Close enough."

"And what did you answer our gospadin Carelin?"

"I gave him neither a yes nor a no."

"Women," Maluta said, as if that one word explained everything. He was silent while they served. He did not look at his plate or at his still-lighted cigarette. When the waiter left, he said, "Well, perhaps in this case your female, er, indecisiveness, has served us in good stead."

He did not immediately elucidate but, rather, lit into his pelmeni with gusto. Somewhere during the recent conversation he had regained his appet.i.te. It was not until he finished, pus.h.i.+ng up the last of the meat dumplings onto a thick slab of black bread, that he spoke again.

"I want you to be my sparrow with Carelin," he said, around a mouthful of food.

"And get him to use his influence with Genachev." Thinking, I have him now.

Maluta nodded, rinsed his mouth with a large gulp of the spiced vodka before swallowing. "That would do me very well." He smiled his odd, bone-chilling smile; she suppressed a shudder.

Daniella felt the triumph like a dove fluttering against her heart. She did not downplay the danger of such a double game, but the risk was acceptable considering the circ.u.mstances. She had also found out something quite vital about Maluta: he did not have surveillance on her. Otherwise, he would have known that she had already been to bed with Mikhail Carelin.

Feeling more relaxed than she had all evening, she said, "All right. I think I can manage it."

"A direct line into Genachev's mind." He was deep in thought.

She nodded. "It is possible, yes."

"Good. Initiate it."

As they retrieved their coats, Daniella thought, I will be his sparrow; I will spy for him, yes. If it means that I can bring him down, it is worth doing this. Even for such a monster.

In the aftermath of the party Simbal and Monica ate overstuffed sandwiches he had slapped together from odds and ends lying around Max Threnody's refrigerator. Shoulder to shoulder, they tore into them voraciously, like little animals, bent over the outsized double sink in the kitchen. From the living room emanated the sounds of Max seeing off the last of his guests. DEA types were tightly wound. They tended to blow off a lot of steam in relaxed circ.u.mstances. That was only to be expected; it was in fact the major reason for Max's infamous parties. Steam was far better blown off in a private place than in public.

In the heat of all the emotion being thrown around, Simbal hadn't forgotten why he had come here. Around a swig of Dos Equis Amber he said, "I didn't notice Peter Curran around tonight. Did I miss him?" And suddenly the blood drained from Monica's face.

She put down her half-eaten sandwich. In a small voice she said, "What made you say that?"

"Say what?"

"Mention Peter."

He shrugged, on his guard now. He watched her carefully. He wanted very much for her to face him so that he could see the full run of emotion in her. "Peter and I knew each other fairly well when I was here, that's all." He waited a second. "Monica, what is it?" A worried friend, nothing more. Above all, he must convince her that he had no special interest in Peter Curran.

"I didn't know that you and Peter were friends," she said, still not looking at him.

"We weren't really. It wasn't easy to get close to Peter as I remember. But we were in Burma together for about six weeks before he was pulled out." Watch it!

"Yeah. I remember that." She picked up her sandwich again, licked Russian dressing off her fingers. She seemed abruptly tired, as if even this much talk about him exhausted her. "I didn't know you were there at the time."

"I don't think we'd met yet," he said easily. "It seems to me I ran into you after I got back that first time. It was here, I think."

She gave him a wan smile. "You remember, then." Her mind was clearly on something else. Peter Curran.

"He wasn't here, I take it."

Monica jerked as if he had p.r.i.c.ked her with the tip of a knife, and he thought, What the h.e.l.l is going on?

"No," she said, so quietly he had to bend closer to hear her, "he wasn't."

Simbal looked down, saw her thumbs had gone all the way through the thick sandwich, from the pressure she had been exerting. Best to ignore that, he decided.

"So he's on a.s.signment then."

"Can we talk about something else?" Her head swung toward him; he was surprised at how pale she had become.

"Sure. I'm sorry." He touched her. "Monica, I wish you'd tell me"

"Take me home, Tony." There was no expression on her face. She wiped her hands on a paper towel, "just take me home. And don't say another word, okay? Okay?"

It wasn't okay but he was determined that she should not know that.

The Chaika still stank of smoke even though Alexei, at Daniella's unspoken command, had done his best to air out the interior while she and Maluta had been at dinner.