“Back home our people huddle in tiny apartments, but the nachalstvo live in mansions. They treat themselves like princes on our money. My wife cannot get a good hair dryer or shoes that do not fall apart, yet billions are wasted on crazy foreign missions to impress ... who? These people?”
“Things are changing,” said Monk helpfully. The Siberian shook his head.
Gorbachev had been in power since March, but the reforms he unwillingly, and in most cases unwittingly, introduced did not begin to bite until late 1987. Moreover, Solomin had not seen his native land for two years.
“Not changing. Those shits at the top ... I tell you, Esteban, since I moved to Moscow I have seen waste and profligacy you would not believe.”
“But the new man, Gorbachev, maybe he will change things,” said Monk. “I am not so pessimistic. One day the Russian people will be free of this dictatorship. They will have votes, real votes. Not so long now …”
“Too long. Not fast enough.”
Monk took a deep breath. A cold pitch is a dangerous ploy. In a Western democracy a loyal Soviet officer receiving a pitch can complain to his ambassador. It can lead to a diplomatic incident. In an obscure tyranny it can lead to a long and lonely death. Without any warning, Monk dropped into flawless Russian.
“You could help it change, my friend. Together, we could help it all to change. The way you want it to be.”
Solomin stared at him intently for a good thirty seconds. Monk stared back. Finally the Russian said in his own language:
“Who the hell are you?”
“I think you know that already, Pyotr Vasilyevitch. The question now is whether you will betray me, knowing what these people will do to me before I die. And then live with yourself.”
Solomin continued to stare at him. Then he said:
“I wouldn’t betray my worst enemy to these monkeys. But you have a hell of a nerve. What you ask is crazy. Madness. I should tell you to go fuck yourself.”
“Perhaps you should. And I would go. Fast, for my own sake. But to sit on your thumbs—to watch, hate and do nothing. Is that not also crazy?”
The Russian rose, his beer undrunk.
“I must think,” he said.
“Tomorrow night,” said Monk still in Russian. “Here. You come alone, we talk. You come with guards, I am dead. You do not come, I leave on the next plane.”
Major Solomin stalked out.
All Standard Operating Procedures would have told Monk to get out of Yemen, and fast. He had not had a total rebuff, but he had not made a score either. A man with his mind in turmoil can change that mind, and the cellars of the Yemeni secret police are fearsome places.
Monk waited twenty-four hours. The major returned, alone. It took two days more. Concealed in his toiletries Monk had brought the basics for a communications package: the secret inks, the safe addresses, the harmless phrases that contained their hidden meanings. There was not much Solomin could divulge from Yemen, but in a year he would be back in Moscow. If he still wished, he could communicate.
When they parted, their handshake lasted several seconds.
“Good luck, my friend,” said Monk.
“Good hunting, as we say back home,” replied the Siberian.
In case they might be seen leaving the Rock together, Monk sat on. His new recruit would need a code name. Far above, the stars glittered with that amazing brightness only seen in the tropics.
Among them Monk picked out the belt of the Great Hunter. Agent GT Orion was born.
¯
ON the second of August Boris Kuznetsov received a personal letter from the British journalist Mark Jefferson. It was on the letterhead of the Daily Telegraph in London, and although faxed to the newspaper’s Moscow bureau, it had been hand-delivered at the headquarters of the UPF Party.
Jefferson made plain his personal admiration of the stance taken by Igor Komarov against, chaos, corruption, and crime, and his own study of the party leader’s speeches over recent months.
With the recent death of the Russian president, he went on, the whole question of the future of the world’s largest country was once again a matter of focal interest. He personally wished to visit Moscow in the first half of August. For the sake of tact, he would no doubt have to interview both the candidates for the future presidency of the left and the center. This however would only be a matter of form.
Clearly the outer world’s only real interest would be in the foregone victor of that contest, Igor Komarov. He, Jefferson, would be deeply grateful if Kuznetsov could see his way clear to recommending that Mr. Komarov receive him. He could promise a major, center-page spread in the Daily Telegraph, with certain syndication across Europe and North America.