severe State Department storm. That fact alone was enough to propel an agent from Brussels into a transatlantic pursuit, debts notwithstanding. A white status contact was a momentary truce; a truce generally meant that someone was about to do something drastic. And if there existed even the remote possibility that the legendary Scofield might defect, any risk was worth the candle. The man who brought in Beo- wulf Agate would have all of Soviet Intelligence at his feet.
But defection was not possible for Scofield... any more than it was for him. The enemy was the enemy; that would never change.
Vasili picked up the phone again. There was an all-night number in the Lazarev district of the waterfront used by Greek and Iranian businessmen to send out cables to their home offices. By saying the right words, priority would be given over the existing traffic; within several hours his cable would reach "capitol depot." It was a hotel on Nebraska Avenue in Washington, D.C.
He would meet with Scofield on neutral ground, some place where neither could take advantage of the location. Within the departure gates of an airline where the security measures were the harshest-West Berlin or Tel Aviv, it did not matter; distance was inconsequential. But they had to meet, and Scofield had to be convinced of the necessity of that meeting.
The cipher to Washington instructed the agent from Brussels to convey the following to Beowulf Agate.
We have traded in blood very dear to both ot us. In truth, I more than you but you could not know it. Now there is another who would hold us responsible for international slaughter on a scale to which neither ot us can subscribe. I operate outside of authority and alone. We must exchange views---as loathsome as it may be to both of us. Choose a neutral location, within an airport security compound.
Suggest El Al, Tel Aviv or German domestic carrier, West Berlin. This courier will know how to reply.
My name is known to you.
It was nearly four o'clock in the morning before he closed his eyes. He had not slept in nearly three days, and when sleep came, it was deep and long. He had gone to bed before there was any evidence of the sun in the eastern sky; he awoke an hour after it had descended in the West. That was good. His mind and his body had needed the rest, and one traveled at night to the place he was going in Sevastopol.
There were three hours before the duty officer arrived at KGB; it was simpler not to involve anyone else at headquarters. The fewer who knew he was in the city, the better. Of course, the cryptographer knew, he had deduced the connection from the cipher out of Amsterdam, but the man would say nothing. Taleniekov had trained him, taken a bright young man from the austerity of Riga to the freer life in Sevastopol.
The time could be well spent, thought Vasili. He would eat, then make arrangements for passage in the hold of a Greek freighter that would cut straight across the sea, then follow the southern coast through the Bosporus, and on to the Dardanelles. If any of the Greek or Iranian units in the pay of the CIA or SAVAK recognized him-and it was possible-he would be entirely professional. As the previous director of the KGB sector, he had not exposed the escape route for personal reasons.
However, if a musician named Pietre Rydukov did not make a telephone call to Sevastopol within two days after departure, exposure was guaranteed, KGB reprisals to follow. It would be a shame; other privileged men might wish to use the route later, their talents and information worth having.
Taleniekov put on the undistinguished, ill-fitting overcoat and his battered hat. A slouch and a pair of steelrimmed spectacles were added.
He checked his appearance in the mirror; it was satisfactory. He picked up the leather violin case; it completed his disguise, for no musician left his instrument in a strange hotel room. He went out the door, down the staircase-never an elevatorand out into the Sevastopol streets. He would walk to the waterfront; he knew where to go and what to say.
Fog rolled in from the sea, curling through the beams of the floodlights on the pier. There was activity everywhere as the hold of the freighter was loaded. Giant cranes swung cables cradling enormous boxcars of merchandise over the side of the ship. The loading crews were Russian, supervised by Greeks.