The Quest

Chapter 5

It was never good to let them see you looking dejected, KGB Maj. Vladmir Karamatsov reminded himself, throwing his shoulders back as he stepped to the door of the military aircraft and breathed the cool night air of Chicago. At the base of the short ladder leading down from the jet was his staff car, his chauffeur who was waiting on the runway tarmac beside it, snapped to attention as he saw his superior.

Karamatsov smiled as he nimbly jumped the last few steps of the ladder, then tossed his leather dispatch case in a gentle arc to his subordinate.

The driver caught the case, saluted, and said, “Good evening, Comrade Major.”

“Good evening, Piotr,” Karamatsov responded without looking at the man. He stared at the runway lights at the far end of the field instead. More military transports were arriving. He reflected that they would be needed. After the loss of the new American President, Samuel Chambers, and the dangerous and embarrassing episode with John Rourke and his own wife, Natalia, Karamatsov had revised his earlier impressions of American pacification following the war that his country had nominally won. A nation of armed citizens, a nation of individualists—it would be hard to quell their resistance. He had learned that.

Rather than bombing the cities, Karamatsov thought, smiling almost bitterly, they should have bombed the countryside. Bombing the countryside would have been easier in the final analysis, since the people of the cities would have been easier to subjugate. He had seen no point in bombing New York out of existence, for example. The wealth of the city was eternally lost now, and the weaponless, fear-ridden people of the American giant would have been easier to subjugate than the heavily armed and fiercely independent Westerners and Southerners.

He noticed himself shrugging his shoulders as Piotr, his driver, said, “Comrade Major, there is something?” “No, Piotr,” Karamatsov said and turned, his dark eyes gleaming. “I was just considering the efficiency with which our leaders are introducing additional troops to aid in the pacification of the United States. We are fortunate indeed to be possessed of such men of courage and foresight. Is this not so, Piotr?” “Yes, Comrade Major,” the young man said. A smile forced on his face, Karamatsov thought.

The KGB major and the Army corporal eyed each other a moment, Karamatsov still thinking in English, saying in his mind, “The boy doesn’t believe that bullshit any more than I do.” He laughed, then walked toward his open car door, and stepped inside the Cadillac. He liked American cars: they ran, which was more, he thought, than could be said of their Soviet counterparts.

Undoing the holsterless belt on his greatcoat, then undoing the double row of buttons, he slumped back in the seat, taking the proffered dispatch case from Piotr. “To the house, Piotr.” He removed his hat, setting it on the seat beside him on top of the dispatch case, and closed his eyes, waiting for the motion of the car to start as soon as his luggage was removed from the plane and placed in the trunk of the car.

He opened his eyes and sat up, startled. The car was slowing down, and he sat forward in the rear seat to look over the front seat through the tinted glass of the windshield. He could see the house. Large, white-painted brick with a low porch and three steps leading from it toward a walk that jutted out to a cemented driveway slicing between dead grass patches that once had been verdant lawns, he imagined.

The square footage of the house was over three thousand, larger by far than anything he and Natalia had ever lived in. At one time, the suburb of Chicago, where the house was situated, had been for the very rich. Now they were dead or had fled. All houses within the six-block area had been taken over as an officer’s compound or for important civilian officials, falling into both categories, really.

Karamatsov thought he had gotten one of the best of the houses.

As the Cadillac Fleetwood turned up the driveway, Karamatsov leaned back, minutely inspecting the insignia on his hat, but really wondering what it would be like with Natalia. It would be the first private time they had had since the events leading to Chambers’s and Rourke’s escape from the complex in the taken-over air base in Texas. He had covered for her, partially he realized because she knew enough about him to damn him and partially—The car stopped and Karamatsov put on his hat, waiting for his chauffeur to open his door. Had Rourke lied, he asked himself? Had Rourke and Natalia been lovers?

“What sir?” Piotr asked.

Karamatsov half turned to face the younger man as he stood beside the door. Karamatsov stopped, frozen almost half-bent as he stepped from the back seat of the car. “Nothing, Piotr, nothing.” Karamatsov stepped out of the car, his great coat unbuttoned, his belt over his arm beside the dispatch case. “I will need you at six a.m. Have a pleasant evening.” “You too, Comrade Major, a pleasant evening.”

Looking up at the lighted windows in the house, thinking about the woman inside, anger suddenly boiled within him. Karamatsov muttered, “Yes. Thank you, Piotr.” Turning on his heel, he added, “The bags—place them just inside the doorway and you may leave.” “Yes, Comrade Major.”

Karamatsov stood at the base of the steps, watching Piotr pass him to go up to the door, ring the bell and wait—a flight bag, a large briefcase and a suit bag in his arms.

The door opened. Karamatsov could not see her, only hear the voices.

Piotr said, “Good evening, Comrade.”

“Good evening, Piotr,” the soft contralto responded.

Karamatsov balled his right fist. He imagined her with closed eyes. She liked white, and she was probably wearing a white robe over a white negligee. She would be impeccably beautiful as she was always—the bright dark-blue eyes, the almost black hair, the ivory white of the skin that lost any suntan almost immediately to return to the almost religious alabaster radiance. She would be smiling at Piotr; she always smiled at people. That was part of why she was the best agent he knew in KGB: she was coldly efficient and deadly, but there was a warmth and humanness in her when business was not the order of the day. Even her enemies had always found it hard to hate her.

He walked up the steps and stopped at the small porch, looking over Piotr as he set down the baggage and staring at Natalia, his wife.

“Good evening, Natalia,” he murmured.

“Good evening, Vladmir,” she answered, her eyes downcast.

She was wearing white, something with lace that she had not acquired in the Soviet Union, something beautiful. She looked the model wife—elegant, lovely, almost shy and demure. She remained unmoving as Piotr came to attention between them.

“Good night, Piotr,” Karamatsov said.

Piotr looked awkward. It had suddenly become common knowledge that Karamatsov and Natalia were married, a fact Karamatsov had concealed for years, and the looks of awkwardness in the eyes of those who knew them, however casually, were something he was becoming accustomed to.

Natalia said nothing. Piotr moved between them and stepped out, saluting as Karamatsov waved him away. The door closed behind Karamatsov’s hand as he leaned against it. Natalia was still staring at the floor; he could not see her eyes.

“You are radiant tonight. You are radiant every night, but you know that,” he whispered hoarsely. Stepping away from the door, he stripped the black leather gloves from his hands and set them along with his hat and dispatch case on the small leather-covered table by the door. He slipped off the greatcoat and draped it across a French provincial chair beside the table.

“A drink, please?” he asked.

She said nothing, but moved away. Because of the flowing quality of the lace-trimmed floor length robe she wore, it seemed she floated to the kitchen rather than walked, he thought.

He unbuttoned his uniform tunic and removed it, dropping it on the side of a sofa as he stepped down three steps into the living room. He undid the top buttons of his white shirt, automatically checking the tiny S & W Model 36 holstered inside his trouser band on his left hip.

He turned, seeing Natalia re-enter from the kitchen with a tray containing a bottle of vodka and a glass.

“The ever dutiful wife,” he remarked as she passed him and bent over a low coffee table to set down the bottle and glass. “You aren’t drinking?” “I don’t feel like it, Vladmir,” she said quietly.

His hands held her shoulders and he snapped her around to him. Her dark hair fell across her forehead as her head bent back, tossing the hair from her face showing her slender white neck. His right hand moved to her throat and tightened around it.

“You’re hurting me.”

Karamatsov laughed. “You are a martial arts expert; why don’t you stop me?” he asked, then let go of her neck, bent down and poured a glass of vodka for himself and downed half the tumbler. He looked at her. “I want you to have a drink.” He knotted the fingers of his right hand in the hair at the nape of her neck and bent her head back, arching her back. Her mouth contorted downward. Karamatsov raised the glass to her mouth, forced its rim between her lips, and poured the vodka from the glass, some of the liquid dribbling down the sides of her mouth. He let go of her hair as she started to cough, choking on the vodka.

Her head bent low over her knees, one hand held her hair from her face as she sat perched on the edge of the sofa.

He bent down, staring at her. “Did you drink with Rourke, Natalia? Do you like American whiskey better than Russian vodka?” He half stood, poured another glass of the vodka for himself, studied the clear liquid for an instant. He suddenly raked the back of his right hand downward, his knuckles connecting against the miraculously perfect right cheek of the seated woman in front of him. The force of his hand knocked her from the edge of the couch onto the floor.

“I did not cheat on you with Rourke. He wouldn’t,” she said, staring up at Karamatsov from the floor.

Karamatsov dropped to his knees, spilling half the vodka from his glass, wetting the front of his shirt and pants. His face inches from hers, he rasped, “But you wanted to!” His right fist lashed out, and her left cheekbone suddenly lost its perfection as well.