murder? he wondered. That was another first. Never in his experience had espionage involved the violation of that law. No, an intelligence operation was about the transfer of information, which was dangerous enough. The inclusion of murder was an additional hazard that was not calculated to please a trained spy. It made noise, as they said, and noise was something a spy avoided as much as a cat burglar, and for much the same reason.
“Call Provalov,” Yefremov told his subordinate. Two reasons for that. First, he rather owed it to the militia lieutenant, who’d presented him with both the case and the subject. Second, the civilian cop might know something useful to his part of this case. They continued to watch Suvorov/Koniev for another ten minutes. Finally, he stood and walked back to his car for the drive back to his apartment, during which he was duly followed by the ever-changing surveillance team. After the requisite fifteen minutes, one of Yefremov’s people crossed the street and retrieved the case from the bench. It was the locked one again, which told them that the item inside was perhaps more important. You had to get past the anti-tamper device to keep the contents from being destroyed, but the FSS had people well skilled in that, and the key for this transfer case had already been struck. That was confirmed twenty minutes later, when the case was opened and the contents extracted, unfolded, photographed, refolded, reinserted, and, finally, relocked in the container, which was immediately driven back to the bench.
Back at FSS headquarters, the decryption team typed the message into a computer into which the one-time-pad had already been inputted. After that, it was a matter of mere seconds before the computer performed a function not unlike sliding a document over a printed template. The clear-text message was, agreeably, in Russian. The content of the message was something else.
“Yob tvoyu maht!” the technician breathed, in one of his language’s more repulsive imprecations: Fuck your mother. Then he handed the page to one of the supervising inspectors, whose reaction was little different. Then he walked to the phone and dialed Yefremov’s number.
“Pavel Georgeyevich, you need to see this.”
Provalov was there when the chief of the decryption section walked in. The printout was in a manila folder, which the head cryppie handed over without a word.
“Well, Pasha?” the homicide investigator asked.
“Well, we have answered our first question.”
The motorcar was even purchased at the same dealership in central Moscow, the sheet read. There is no fault to be found here. The men who performed the mission are both dead in St. P. Before I can make another attempt, I need an indication from you on the time line, and also on the payment to my contractors.
“Golovko was the target, then,” Provalov observed. And the head of our country’s intelligence service owes his life to a pimp.
“So it would appear,” Yefremov agreed. “Note that he doesn’t ask payment for himself. I would imagine he’s somewhat embarrassed at having missed his target on the first attempt.”
“But he’s working for the Chinese?”
“So that would appear as well,” the FSS man observed, with an inward chill. Why, he asked himself, would the Chinese wish to do such a thing? Isn’t that nearly an act of war? He sat back in his chair and lit up a smoke, looking into the eyes of his police colleague. Neither man knew what to say at the moment, and both kept silent. It would all soon be out of and far beyond their hands. With that decided, both men headed home for dinner.
The morning broke more brightly than usual in Beijing. Mrs. Yu had slept deeply and well, and though she awoke with a slight headache, she was grateful for Wen’s insistence on a couple of drinks before retiring. Then she remembered why she was in Beijing, and any good feelings departed from her mind. Breakfast was mainly green tea and was spent looking down, remembering the sound of her husband’s voice in the bleak acceptance of the fact that she’d never hear it again. He’d always been in a good mood over breakfast, never forgetting, as she had just done, to say grace over the morning meal and thank God for another day in which to serve Him. No more. No more would he do that, she reminded herself. But she had duties of her own to perform.
“What can we do, Zhong?” she asked, when her host appeared.
“I will go with you to