With the exception of a brief weekend conference fourteen months ago in Moscow, he had not seen her since Riga. During the conference they had spent one night together-the first night-but had decided not to meet subsequently, for professional reasons. The "brilliant Taleniekov" bad been showing signs of strain, his oddly intemperate behavior annoying too many people-and too many people had been talking about it, whispering about it.
Him. It was best they sever all associations outside the conference rooms.
For in spite of total clearance, she was still being watched. He was not the sort of man she should be seen with; he had told her that, insisted upon it.
Five years ago Lodzia Kronescha had been in trouble; some said it was serious enough to remove her from her post in Leningrad. Others disagreed, claiming her lapses of judgment were due to a temporary siege of depression brought on by family problems. Besides, she was extremely effective in her work; whom would they get to replace her during those times of crisis?
Lodzia was a ranking mathematician, a doctoral graduate from Moscow University, and trained in the Lenin Institute. She was among the most knowledgeable computer programmers in the field.
So she was kept on and given the proper warnings regarding her responsibility to the state-which had made laer education possible. She was relegated to Night Opera- tions, Computer Division, KGB-Leningrad, Ligovsky Prospeckt. That was five years ago; she would remain there for at least another two.
Lodzia's "crimes" might have been dismissed as professional errors-a series of minor mathematical variations -had it not been for a disturbing occurrence thirteen hundred miles away in Vienna. Her brother had been a senior air defense officer and he had committed suicide, the reasons for the act unexplained. Nevertheless, the air defense plans for the entire southwest German border had been altered. And Lodzia Kronescha, had been called in for questioning.
Taleniekov had been present, intrigued by the quiet, academic woman brought in under the KGB lamps. He bad been fascinated by her slow, thoughtful responses that were as convincing as they were lacking in panic. She had readily admitted that she adored her brother and was distressed to the point of a breakdown over his death and the manner of it. No, she had known of nothing irregular about his life; yes, he had been a devoted member of the party; no, she had not kept his correspondence-it had never occurred to her to do so.
Taleniekov had kept silent, knowing what he knew by instinct and a thousand encounters with concealed truth. She had been lying. From the beginning.
But her lies were not rooted in treason, or even for her own survival. It was something else. When the daily KGB surveillance was called off, he had flown frequently to Leningrad from nearby Riga to institute his own.
Vasili's trailing of Lodzia had revealed what he then knew he would find.
Extremely artful contacts in the parks of the Petrodvorets with an American agent out of Helsinki. The meetings were not sought, they had been forced upon her.
He had followed her to her flat one evening and had confronted her with his evidence. Instinct had told him to hold back official action. There was far less than treason in her activities.
"What I have done is insignificant!" she had cried, tears of exhaustion filling her eyes. "It is nothing compared to what they want! But they have proof of my doing something, they will not do what they threaten to dol" The American had shown her photographs, dozens of them, mostly of her brother, but also of other high-rankIng Soviet officials in the Vienna sectors. They depicted the grossest obscenities, extremes of sexual behaviormale with female, and male with male--all taken while the subjects were drunk, all showing a Vienna of excessive debauchery in which responsible Soviet figures were willingly corrupted by any who cared to corrupt them.
The threat was simple: these photographs would be spread across the world. Her brother-as well as those superior to him in rank and stature-would be held up to universal ridicule. As would the Soviet Union.
"What did you hope to gain by doing what you didT' he had asked.
"Wear them outl" she had replied. "They will keep me on a string, never knowing what I will do, can do... have done. Every now and then they get word of computer errors. They are minor, but it is enough. They will not carry out their threats." "Mere is a better way,"