Vasili had said as much to his contact at the VKR, but was told confidentially that not even the extraordinary Taleniekov could interfere with Group Nine, Vodennaya Kontra Rozvedka.
And what in the name of all the discredited Tzars was Group Nine?
It was the new Group Nine, his friend had explained. It was the successor to the infamous Section Nine, KGB. Smert Shpiononam. That division of Soviet intelligence devoted exclusively to the breaking of men's minds and wills through extortion, torture and that most terrible of methods-killing loved ones in front of loved ones.
Killing was nothing strange to Vasili Taleniekov, but that kind of killing turned his stomach. The threat of such killing was often useful, but not the act itself. The State did not require it, and only sadists demanded it. If there was truly a successor to Smert Shpiononam, then he would let it know with whom it had to contend within the larger sphere of KGB- Specifically, one "extraordinary Taleniekov." They would learn not to contradict a man who had spent twenty-five years roaming all of Europe in the cause of the State.
Twenty-five years. It had been a quarter of a century since a twenty-one-year-old student with a gift for languages had been taken out of his classes at the Leningrad University and sent to Moscow for three years of intensive training. It was training the likes of which the son of introspective Socialist teachers could barely believe. He had been plucked out of a quiet home where books and music were the staples, and set down in a world of conspiracy and violence, where ciphers, codes, and physical abuse were the main ingredients. Where all forms of surveillance and sabotage, espionage and the taking of life-not murder; murder was a term that had no application-were the subjects studied., He might have failed had it not been for an incident that changed his life and gave him the motive to excel. It had been provided by animals-American animals.
He bad been sent to East Berlin on a training exercise, an observer of undercover tactics at the height of the Cold War. He had formed a relationship with a young woman, a German girl who -fervently believed in the cause of the Marxist state, and who had been recruited by the KGB.
Her position was so minor her name was not even on a payroll; she was an unimportant organizer of demonstrations, paid with loose Reichsmarks from an expense drawer. She was quite simply a university student far more passionate in her beliefs than knowledgeable, a wild-eyed radical who considered herself a kind of Joan of Arc. But Vasili had loved her.
They had lived together for several weeks and they were glorious weeks, filled with the excitement and anticipation of young love. And then one day she was sent across Checkpoint Kasimir. It was such an unimportant thing, a street corner protest on the Kurfijrstendamm. A child leading other children, mouthing words they barely understood, espousing commitments they were ill-prepared to accept. An unimportant ritual.
Insignificant.
But not to the animals of the American Army of Occupation, G Branch, who set other animals upon her.
Her body was sent back in a hearse, her face bruised almost beyond recognition, the rest of her clawed to the point where the flesh was torn, the blood splotches of dried red dust. And the doctors had confirmed the worst. She bad been repeatedly raped and sodomized.
Attached to the body-the note held in place by a nail driven into her arm-were the words: Up your commie ass. Just like hers.
Animals!
American animals who bought their way to victory without a shell having fallen on their soil, whose might was measured by unfettered industry that made enormous profits from the carnage of foreign lands, whose soldiers peddled cans of food to hungry children so as to gratify other appetites. All armies had animals, but the Americans were most offensive; they proclaimed such righteousness. The sanctimonious were always the most offensive.
Taleniekov had returned to Moscow, the memory of the girl's obscene death burned into his mind. Whatever he had been, he became something else.
According to many, he became the best there was, and by his own lights none could possibly wish to be better than he was. He had seen the enemy and he was filth. But that enemy had resources beyond imagination, wealth beyond belief; so it was necessary to be better than the enemy in things that could not be purchased. One had to learn to think as he