While they shook hands, Scofield continued. "You know that FourZero business would make me nervous if you hadn't called me in here." "What do you mean?" Their hands were clasped, but the movement stopped.
"Well, our own field personnel won't know I'm terminated, but the Soviets will. They won't bother me now. When someone like me is taken out-of-strategy, everything changes. Contacts, codes, ciphers, sterile locations; nothing remains the same. They know the rules; they'll leave me alone. Thanks very much." "I'm not sure I understand you," said the undersecretary.
"Oh, come on, I said I'm grateful. We both know that the KGB operations in Washington keep their cameras trained on this place twenty-four hours a day. No specialist who's to remain in sanction is ever brought here.
As of an hour ago they know I'm out. Thanks again, Mr. Congdon. It was considerate of you." The Undersecretary of State, Consular Operations, watched as Scofield walked across the office and let himself out the door.
It was over. Everything. He would never have to hurry back to an antiseptic hotel room to see what covert message had arrived. No longer would it be necessary to ar- range for three changes of vehicle to get from point A to point B. The lie to Congdon notwithstanding, the Soviets probably did know by now he had been terminated. If they didn't, they would soon. After a few months of inactivity, the KGB would accept the fact that he was no longer of value.
That rule was constant; tactics and codes were altered. The Soviets would leave him alone; they would not kill him.
But the lie to Congdon had been necessary, if only to see the expression on his face. We'd like it kept out of the record. Four-Zero entry. The man was so transparentl He really believed he had created the climate for the execution of his own man, a man he considered dangerous. That a supposedly active agent would be killed by the Soviets for the sake of a kill. Then-pointing to official separationthe Department of State would disclaim any responsibility, no doubt insisting that the dead man refused safeguards.
The bastards never changed, but they knew so little. An execution for its own sake was pointless, the fallout often too hazardous. One killed for a purpose; to learn something by removing a vital link in a chain, or to stop something from happening. Or to teach a specific lesson. But always fora reason.
Except in instances like Prague, and even that could be considered a lesson. A brother for a wife.
but it was over. There were no strategies to create, no decisions to make that resulted in a defection or a turnback, of someone living or not living. It was over.
Perhaps now even the hotel rooms would come to an end. And the stinking beds in rundown rooming houses in the worst sections of a hundred cities.
He was so sick of them; he despised them all. With the exception of a single brief period-too brief, too terribly brief-he had not lived in a place he could call his own for twenty-two years.
Chapter Four
But that pitifully brief period, twenty-seven months in a lifetime, was enough to see him through the agonies of a thousand nightmares. The memories never left him; they would sustain him until the day he died.
It had been only a small flat in West Berlin, but it was the home of dreams and love and laughter he had never thought he'd be capable of knowing. His beautiful Karine, his adorable Karine. She of the wide, curious eyes and the laughter that came from deep inside her, and moments of quiet when she touched him. He was hers and she was his and.
Death in the Unter den Linden.
Oh, God! A telephone call and a password. Her husband needed her.
Desperately. See a guard, cross the checkpoint. Hurry!
And a KGB pig had no doubt laughed. Until Prague. There was no laughter in that man after Prague.
Scofield could feel the sting in his eyes. The few sudden tears had made contact with the night wind. He brushed them aside with his glove and crossed the street.
On the other side was the lighted front of a travel agency, the posters in the window displaying idealized, unreal bodies soaking up the sun. The Washington amateur, Congdon, had a point; the Caribbean was a good idea. No self-respecting intelligence service sent agents to the islands in the Caribbean-for fear of winning. Down in the islands,