Grandmaster (33 page)

"What you're suggesting is that she's working for you against me. It won't work, Ostrakov. I've used the same ploy myself."

"Alyosha! I meant nothing of the kind." He smiled mirthlessly. "Perhaps your position has made you suspicious."

"Bugging Katarina's apartment may have had something to do with that. But, of course, what should one expect from thugs?"

Ostrakov's face reddened with anger. "Nichevo is an insulated pocket in the security system. It makes its own rules, runs its own projects. Through the years, its director—first your father, now you—has become nearly inviolate. Above the law, as it were. Nichevo could become a dangerous organization."

"I'm not here to discuss Nichevo. What did you want with me last night?"

"Comrade, I came to bring you good news. Great news. The hour was late, but I was sure my message would have more than made up for the small inconvenience. Unfortunately, you were nowhere to be found. Playing tricks on sweet Katarina already, eh?" With his hands, he formed the exaggerated shape of a woman in the air. Zharkov had to control an impulse to hit the man.

"You know perfectly well where I was," he said, "since the whore who works for you reported all to you. What did you want?"

His voice was growing colder, and his lizard-lidded gray eyes locked on Ostrakov's, forcing the KGB official to look away.

"The premier wishes to see you," Ostrakov said.

"Kadar?"

"The
Vozhd,"
Ostrakov whispered. "He wants to see you. Now."

The
Vozhd,
or great leader, had had no time for Zharkov since his inauguration three months before. The only time Zharkov had even met the man was at a formal reception during the inaugural ceremonies. Kadar had been polite—part of his new image, which was already being cultivated by a staff of underlings for the selling of the premier to the world—but the leader's ill feeling toward Zharkov had been evident even then.

Konstantin Kadar had been head of the KGB since 1955, under Premiers Malenkov, Bulganin, Khrushchev, Kosygin, Brezhnev, and Andropov. Under his direction, the Soviet secret service had become the largest and most powerful police organization in the world. Kadar could, almost at will, execute nearly any person in the world without reprisal, and frequently took that option. The political prisoners at Lubyanka—some of whom could not even recall their "crimes" against the state, all of whom had been tried secretly—referred to Kadar as “Little Josef” because of his Stalinesque methods. Others had labeled him more succinctly "the Butcher."

During his KGB years, everyone in Russia had been answerable to Kadar except for the premier and Nichevo, which had been formed as an independent organization before Kadar's rise to power. Through the years, Kadar had used every device available to obliterate Nichevo, or at least bring it under the control of the KGB. He had gone to each of the six premiers he served and warned him against Nichevo and its potential to overthrow the government, the possibility that it was a hub of foreign espionage activity, the foolishness of allowing an intellectual like Vassily Zharkov to run such an autonomous operation as Nichevo, and the consummate unwisdom of replacing Zharkov with his own son after his death. But none of the leaders had taken his advice. Not one.

What at last became clear to Kadar, what only a handful of people in the Soviet Union and absolutely no one outside it knew, was that Nichevo—so secret, so special to those in ultimate power—was the personal tool of the premier himself.

"The czar's army," Kadar had called Nichevo during a violent quarrel with Zharkov's father. It was not far from the truth. Nichevo originated under Stalin, and Stalin was nothing if not a czar.

After the execution of Premier Aleksei Rykov in 1938, it was evident that in a country with Russia's centuries-old tradition of violence, even the head of state was not safe from government factions vying for power. V. M. Molotov nominally held the office of premier after Rykov, but the real power was already in the hands of Stalin. Stalin was not about to permit the execution of another head of state, particularly if the head was his. He formed Nichevo, drawing it like a cloak around him, then fabricated the myth that the organization was of no importance to him.

The general populace of the intelligence community scoffed at Nichevo from the beginning—at its thugs, its childish projects, even its joking name. The brighter ones wondered aloud why a brilliant and acclaimed political scientist like Vassily Zharkov would toy with such a ridiculous organization, and so another myth was fabricated: Zharkov became Stalin's "nephew." When they heard this new piece of manufactured information, even the bright ones laughed. To make it legitimate. Zharkov was married off to one of Stalin's nieces.

And then came the purges.

First, Stalin wiped out the landowners and dissidents. Next came his enemies. They fell by the thousands, and among them were some of the highest members of government. The NKVD—the old name for the KGB before it accrued its almost total power—was the instrument used to carry out the murders. Then, because the leaders of the NKVD knew too much about his crimes, Stalin ordered them removed, too.

The order went to Vassily Zharkov, head of Nichevo, who carried it out ruthlessly, implacably, quietly.

Nichevo had come of age, and it was untouchable. The KGB had no control over it. Nichevo belonged to the
Vozhd
alone and answered only to him.

Now it belonged to Konstantin Kadar, who could not embrace the organization even though, as premier, Nichevo had finally come under his purview. He still hated it.

And very shortly, Zharkov would give him even more reason to hate it.

 

"
T
he
vozhd
wants to see you
. Immediately," Ostrakov was saying. He had a broad smile on his face.

Zharkov nodded. "When I am through with him," he said, "I will have more to say to you."

"We shall see," Ostrakov said.

"Yes, we shall," said Zharkov.

 

Z
harkov waited in the Kremlin
for three hours before he was taken to the premier's opulent private library. It was a small room, once used as the personal retreat of Czar Nicholas I.

Konstantin Kadar, seated behind an intricately carved rosewood desk, dominated the room. He was a tall man, slim but well muscled for his sixty-four years. His head, elegant and oval-shaped, looked more German than Russian, with its fringe of silver-white hair, its long nose and tight lips. It was not the face of a policeman, Zharkov thought, except for the eyes. Behind their old-fashioned metal-framed glasses, Kadar's eyes were as flat and dead as a shark's.

"Sit down, Colonel Zharkov." When he spoke, nothing moved but his lips. He waited until Zharkov obeyed, not moving a muscle. Zharkov had the feeling of being in the presence of a huge stone idol.

When Zharkov was seated, Kadar arranged some papers into a neat pile and laid them carefully on the desk in front of him. "They call you a prince. Do you know that?"

"No, sir," Zharkov said.

"A prince," Kadar repeated softly, leafing through the papers in front of him. "A scholar, a soldier, a scientist. A chess prodigy at the age of eight. The son of the illustrious Vassily Zharkov." Kadar looked up as he spoke the name, his thin lips wrapping around his teeth. "A chess master at ten. Accepted into the university at fifteen. Honors in senior levels in engineering and physics. Recruited into the intelligence service at seventeen. I remember you, Colonel. You didn't finish the program."

"I was removed to be enrolled at the Institute of International Relations."

"It was unnecessary. We would have used you in the KGB. You were a bright boy. You would have made an adequate analyst."

Exactly, Zharkov thought. Kadar would have liked nothing better than to bury Vassily Zharkov's son in an intelligence analyst's job for the rest of his life. Vassily had permitted the boy to train for two of the three years required of the KGB intelligence program—enough time to learn the basics of tradecraft, without being slotted into a specialty.

"But why should I go at all?" young Zharkov had protested to his father. "Kadar hates you. He'll make my life miserable."

"Because you must learn everything. For Nichevo, you must know everything. Two years of personal unhappiness is not too high a price to pay," the elder Zharkov said. "And he will not dare to make your life too miserable."

Nichevo would be his destiny; both Zharkov and his father had known that from the beginning. There was only one place for a man like Alexander Zharkov in the Soviet Union, and that was at the head of Nichevo. Not the KGB, with its hundreds of thousands of agents enmired in a morass of bureaucracy so deep that most of them spent their time either duplicating the efforts of others or wastefully watching one another. Not the Kremlin, where the gamesmanship of power politics counted above ability. Certainly not in science or law or economics, where only part of Zharkov's mind would be put to use, and that part for projects not of his choosing. Only two endeavors could tax a mind like his to its limits: Nichevo and chess.

And Nichevo
was
chess. Small, independent, and deadly, there was no room for mistakes in Nichevo, just as there was no room for mistakes in the game. The wrong man at the head of Nichevo could destroy it, and there was only one right man, with his genius and careful education and his father's formidable power behind him. For Zharkov, it was always Nichevo, only Nichevo.

"Graduated from the institute at twenty-one," Kadar continued, sounding bored. "Enlisted in the army. Attained rank of full colonel"—he set down the papers—"when you seized Nichevo at age thirty-five."

"I was appointed to the position by Premier Brezhnev," Zharkov said flatly.

"Because your father left no records."

You ought to know, Zharkov said to himself. Kadar had personally raided Vassily Zharkov's office within an hour after Zharkov was taken to the hospital. He found nothing.

"My father was very careful," Zharkov said. "Nichevo is, after all, a secret organization."

Kadar clasped his hands together, extending his index fingers, and rested his chin on them. For the first time, the shark's eyes registered a response, and Zharkov thought with some amusement that the word "records" must be the most frightening in the world for tyrants. It must haunt their dreams, the thought that someone, somewhere, was in possession of facts and history that could be used to tell the world what kind of men they were.

"It is now
my
secret organization," Kadar said. "It exists for me. You are aware of that, aren't you?"

Zharkov nodded. "Under certain circumstances."

"Under any circumstances. I own Nichevo. I own you." From the bottom of his pile of papers, Kadar took a photograph. It was from the Samarkand Hotel, showing the gold coiled snake medallion dangling from Frank Riesling's shattered hand. "Look familiar?"

"It once belonged to an agent," Zharkov said.

"An American agent, Colonel. One you have met several times."

"We have met twice as adults. By coincidence."

"And is the mark on your neck a coincidence as well?"

Ostrakov, Zharkov thought. Lozovan had told all she knew about Corfus to Ostrakov, and Ostrakov had taken it and his filthy tape recordings from Katarina's apartment and had laid them all on the premier's desk. Kadar must now feel that he had a noose to put around Zharkov's throat if he wished. The Nichevo head restrained a smile. He wondered how far Kadar would go.

"I think the Tribunal would be most interested to see the emblem you carry. It is perhaps the same as this Justin Gilead's?" Kadar dangled a green folder between his fingers, toying with it like a boy about to tear the legs off a fly. "It seems you have a lot in common with Mr. Gilead. You even played chess together as children. A very early association. Perhaps your father arranged it, Colonel. Since he conveniently destroyed Nichevo's records before his death, one has no way of knowing just how extensive are your family's relationships with the CIA. Perhaps that is why you told General Ostrakov to let the chess player Kutsenko go when it is known he plans to defect?"

“I told Ostrakov to leave Kutsenko alone and to make sure his wife is reinstated in her post at the hospital,” Zharkov said hotly. “I want that done. Kutsenko is just a pawn in a bigger game."

"Oh?" Kadar fingered the edges of the photograph on his desk.

"I saw to it that Dr. Lena Kutsenko went to Helsinki and made contact with that CIA agent, Frank Riesling. The one that Ostrakov's gorillas shot up like some Chicago massacre. I ordered the extra patrols at the Finnish border to make sure that Kutsenko could not get out along Riesling's regular escape route. The chess player plans to defect during the world challenge chess match in Havana three months from now."

"And you will help him to defect, I suppose," the premier said dryly.

Zharkov smiled. "To a point. Havana will be swarming with CIA agents."

"And?"

"And Fidel Castro will be assassinated.”

Kadar spun around in his chair. The shark eyes had come to life.

"The CIA will be blamed," Zharkov said. "I know it has been a plan of the KGB for the last three years to eliminate Castro when it becomes possible to do so. Cuba costs us too much, and it causes entirely too much trouble in the world. It is unsettling, and Castro is unstable. Nichevo is going to do for you what your own men were incapable of doing."

Kadar rested his chin on his fist. His glance darted around the ceiling in thought. "Why did you kidnap Corfus?"

"I needed to know the password by which the CIA contact in Havana will identify himself to Kutsenko. He is the man on whom we will blame the killing of Castro."

"You could not get that information and let Corfus live?"

"He was already dying when I saw him. Lozovan saw to that. The American did not deserve the kind of death she arranged. So I gave him an easier way to die."

Kadar looked down at the papers on his desk. "And this Justin Gilead. Who is he?"