The Run Around

Chapter Nineteen

Vasili Zenin had always acknowledged – as had every instructor at Kuchino and Balashikha – that the greatest danger of his being identified would be going to the Soviet embassy in Bern to collect the weapons. But the bulk precluded their being left safely at any dead-letter drop, as the passport had been in London, and there was anyway the essential need for him to examine and approve what had been provided: his was the ultimate responsibility, overriding that of the officers at Balashikha who had packaged and despatched them. And any immediate, on-the-spot examination would have clearly been ridiculous anywhere but in the maximum security of the KGB rezidentura within the building, an area forbidden even to the ambassador himself.

Like everything else it had been rehearsed until supposedly perfect in the Kuchino complex, with mock-up streets and avenues and a re-creation of the front of the building behind the protection of its gates and iron railings. KGB personnel performed the role of ordinary diplomats, tradesmen and visitors using the embassy. Created all around were less elaborate false fronts upon which were specifically isolated spots to suggest where Swiss counter-intelligence Watchers might be placed. Their imagined positions had been indicated by automatic cameras triggered by remote control by Watchers of the Soviet service and for a week Zenin had done nothing but attempt to enter and leave without being photographed. On the last day he had managed three unrecorded entries and two missed departures.

He’d succeeded by improvising upon the instructor training, recognizing that what he had to carry marked him more obviously than anyone else going in or out. So he prepared himself to merge with it as naturally as possible into the background, like he had earlier done by becoming a jogger at Primrose Hill. He hoped they’d remembered to pack more than just the M21 and the Browning and their ammunition.

Having had a week to study workmen on the streets of Bern and Geneva, Zenin easily found the day before the planned pick-up a shop in the Speichergasse selling the most commonly worn type of dungarees, blue, with bib and braces. He bought a matching cap as well, a pair of heavy boots and a set of rubber wedges. A comparable bag was the most difficult to locate and it was late afternoon before he discovered a store off the Munstergasse. Everything, of course, had to be kept separate from the hotel in which he was staying, as a supposed tourist, so he took all the packages back to the lock-up garage in which he had parked the hired Peugeot. Unselfconsciously Zenin stripped naked, putting on only the overalls and for an hour vigorously exercised, bending and twisting to crease the newness from them and to get them as sweat-stained as possible. He dried his face with the cap, to mark that as much as he could and scuffed the boots along the floor and against the concrete sides of the garage. The bag was canvas, like that he had to collect, and he dirtied that with dust from the floor. The dungarees were damp with his perspiration when he took them off and Zenin screwed them tightly into a ball, so that they would dry further crumpled.

He approached the garage cautiously the following day, not wanting to be seen entering in a suit and emerging a workman, having to wait fifteen minutes before he was satisfied the road was clear. It was more difficult to leave, because his vision was restricted by the narrowly opened door but again he did so sure that he was unobserved. Zenin travelled back into the centre of town on a tram, confident he’d done a good job on the overalls when a woman already on the seat on which he lowered himself perceptibly moved away.

A hesitant man attracts more attention than a confident one and Zenin went assuredly along the most direct linking street into Brunnadernain, which, somewhat to his surprise, had been dismissed by the professional Watchers at Kuchino as being the unlikeliest to house surveillance spots. He hoped they were right. Protectively, Zenin wore the cap pulled low over his forehead and walked looking slightly down: if there were observation it would be from some elevation, to avoid street level obstruction, so his face was as hidden as it could be.

He made no pause going through the embassy gates, someone with a right to enter, and neither did he approach the main entrance. Instead he went to a smaller side door not obviously marked for tradesmen deliveries, but which was its proper purpose. And which he would have known if he were familiar with the building. To the guard he said: ‘Run Around,’ and was admitted immediately.

The KGB rezidentura was at the rear of the embassy, as distanced as it could be from any overlooking buildings from which directional listening devices could be aimed, an interlocking series of rooms absolutely divided from the rest of the legation by a barred and locked gate behind which sat a uniformed KGB guard. Zenin gave him the same operational identification but before he was admitted the man verified the code with the rezident-in-charge, Yuri Ivanovich Lyudin.

The locally based KGB officer was striding down the corridor, beaming, by the time the security gates thudded closed behind Zenin.

‘Vasili Nikolaevich!’ greeted the rezident.

‘Yuri Ivanovich,’ responded Zenin, more restrained.

Lyudin stopped some way away, still smiling, looking at the workman’s outfit. ‘There were many photographs from which to recognize you today. But we weren’t warned how to expect you!’

‘Of course you weren’t,’ said Zenin, more than restrained. He’d memorized Lyudin’s face from photographs as well but none had shown the man as fat or as flush-faced as he was.

‘It’s very good concealment,’ praised Lyudin.

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Zenin. ‘Have things arrived for me?’

‘A sealed container,’ confirmed Lyudin.

‘Which has remained sealed?’

‘Of course,’ said Lyudin. Why had Dzerzhinsky Square been so insistent that no indication be given to this man about the additional surveillance teams that had been drafted from Moscow?

‘I need an equally sealed room,’ demanded Zenin.

‘One is set aside,’ said Lyudin. ‘But perhaps a little refreshment first? I have some excellent Polish vodka.’

‘It’s ten-thirty in the morning,’ reminded Zenin.

‘I waited for you before I began,’ sniggered Lyudin, wanting the other Russian to accept it as the joke it was intended to be.

Zenin didn’t, nor did he smile. He said: ‘There were some requests from Moscow: detailed information about Geneva?’

Lyudin’s smile became hopefully broader at the awareness of Zenin’s involvement. ‘Which I personally responded to. Myself.’

‘And personally made the surveys?’

‘Yes,’ confirmed Lyudin. ‘I trust it was satisfactory.’

From a series of bars, guessed Zenin. It was easy to guess how Lyudin had gained the patriotic complexion. And why so much of the Geneva information had been inaccurate. The need for protest to Moscow was far more than personal now: such a man, particularly a man in a position of command like Lyudin, represented a positive danger to the entire rezidentura. But more importantly to the KGB itself. Zenin said: ‘I’ve decided upon my report to Moscow.’

‘I am grateful, Comrade Zenin,’ said the other Russian, misunderstanding.

‘The sealed room and the container?’ reminded Zenin.

Lyudin led the way further back into the rezidentura, to a chamber actually within the building, with no connection to any outside surface. It was so small Zenin was practically able to reach out sideways and touch either wall. There was harsh strip lighting around the four sides of the squared ceiling and it illuminated the entire area in a glare so fierce that Zenin had to squint against it.

‘This is the examination room: we were advised you would need to conduct an examination,’ said Lyudin.

Zenin was curious at what other things at what other times might have been examined here: despite his profession he’d never been into a mortuary but imagined this must be very like such a place. There was just a metalled table, a single chair, metal again, and a wall-mounted telephone: there was even a smell of antiseptic cleanliness. He said: ‘This will do adequately.’

‘The container is in my personal security vault.’

‘I would like it now.’

For a moment Zenin imagined the man was going to suggest an alternative but instead Lyudin nodded acceptance and hurried from the room. Zenin found it oppressively hot – he supposed from the intense lighting – and claustrophobic, too. Zenin decided that such surroundings would quickly disorientate a person, particularly if that person were frightened: perhaps it was fortunate he was anything but frightened. Lyudin returned almost at once. The container appeared to be of some hardened plasticized material but Zenin knew it to be stronger than that, a specialized light-weight alloy at least capable of withstanding an aircraft crash and any engulfing fire that might have followed. On the outside was a large combination lock activated only by a first-time operation of the correct selection of numerals, which only he possessed, memorized. Any wrongly probed sequence, in an effort by an expert locksmith to discover the combination, would have automatically set off the phosphorus and then acid incineration of the contents; the container was hermetically sealed so the chemical reaction of phosphorus and acid would have made a gas sufficient to create a bomb capable of destroying everybody and everything within its fifty-metre radius. In addition to the explosion, the alloy under such pressure disintegrated into thousands of razor-edged shards: its destructive capability had been tested over an additional fifty metres against gulag detainees like Barabanov, against whom Zenin had been pitted at Balashikha. There had, of course, been some survivors: twenty, each so badly maimed they were shot on the spot because they could never medically have recovered to perform any further useful function. One hundred and fifty died outright, burst apart.

‘I thought at first it was a standard container, the sort we get all the time?’ said Lyudin, enquiringly.

‘It isn’t,’ said Zenin.

‘Something unusual then?’

‘Get out, Yuri Ivanovich!’ dismissed Zenin.

Zenin locked the door behind the departing Russian and turned back to the container, savouring its very appearance like a child knowing its most asked-for Christmas toy was beneath the wrapping. But there was no excitement shake in his hand as Zenin reached out for the combination, which moved without any perceptible click as the memorized numbers were engaged and discarded: he paused when the final one was released and then snapped open the catch. The container fell apart, either side opening like a giant mouth from its bottom hinges. It was a superbly packed Christmas toy.

The inside had been machined and socketed perfectly to receive and hold every part of the dissembled rifle and each variety of its ammunition. It occupied one entire side of the container, laid out for inspection. Which was what Zenin did, counting off from another memorized list the components which made up the 7.62 mm American M21 sniper’s rifle upon which he had been so diligently trained at Balashikha. It had been reconstructed especially for him by the KGB’s Technical Division, measured to the millimetre to his arm length and shoulder dip, and modified further beyond the standard hand-constructed US model. The walnut and epoxy resin stock had been replaced by a skeleton metal rest to balance the weight of the other adjustments. The most important of these was a series of attachment clasps for the elaborate harness which went far beyond the usually fitted elbow-twist strap. The harness was again made-to-measure and of the best graded leather, once more identifiably American. It was a complete vest, the main part encompassing his body from waist to shoulders, across which went the thickest of the straps. There were four others which attached to special clasps, effectually welding the rifle to his body. The magnified sight maintained the standard design of two stadia on a horizontal graticule but because the range was beyond the designed three hundred metres there was a heavy power ring to increase the sighting distance and this had been allowed for by strengthening the mounting. There had also been another weighting allowance for the final modification. At the bottom of the rifle side of the container was a rectractable three-legged tripod upon which the weapon was to be locked by a grooved screw-nut device, which, together with the harness, made the assembly absolutely rigid. When completely tightened to fix the rifle on to the tripod the screw-nut became parallel with two-minute spring-repressing lines which compensated for the minuscule recoil. That, too, was a modification, even though the trigger pull had been taken up from its 2.15 kg to 1.15.

Zenin felt out, running his fingers at random over the sound suppressor and the primed gas cylinder and the piston, a craftsman encountering the favourite tool of his trade.

The Browning parabellum automatic was on the opposite wall of the case and assembled, except for the empty butt clip, which was fastened alongside. Again there were two varieties of bullets, the Israeli hollow-nosed in a separate holder from the solid test bullets. In this section, too, was the bradawl and screws to fasten the tripod to the floor, adjoining the sockets in which were held hard metalled screws and a screwdriver.

There was a metal bar upright in the centre of the container and from it, in separate plastic bags, were suspended the suit and shoes for Zenin to change into to alter his appearance for his departure from the embassy. At the very bottom was the duplicate bag.

Zenin stripped off the overalls, this time folding them neatly on the table beside the container, and placed the work boots next to them. The suit was intentionally light coloured, beige, to be as opposite as possible from what he had worn when he entered the embassy. When he finished dressing Zenin transferred the rifle parts and the pistol to the bag, hefting it in his hands as a reminder of the weight which he had also rehearsed carrying at Kuchino, and then put the work clothes back into the container, which he closed and resealed against its specialized interior being seen by Lyudin.

The rezident was waiting expectantly in an opposing office when Zenin opened the door. He said: ‘Was everything satisfactory?’

Zenin considered the question ridiculous and the man further incompetent for not making the demand he should have done. He said: ‘What else could it have been?’

‘That drink now?’

It was still almost an hour before the lunch-hour when more people than usual were arranged to make the exodus in which Zenin planned to be concealed. He said: ‘Why not?’

Lyudin led the way to a more spacious office further along the corridor furnished with chairs and a couch. The bottles were set out upon a tray on top of a wall-bordering cupboard. The man splashed neat vodka into two tumblers, offered one to Zenin and made an arm-outstretched toast. ‘Russia!’ he declared and sank the drink Soviet fashion, in one gulp.

Zenin did not bother to respond and only sipped at his drink. He said: ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’

‘I need a formal receipt,’ remembered Lyudin. He produced the form from his pocket and Zenin completed the bureaucratic necessity. As he did so Lyudin refilled his glass and made to top up that of Zenin, who covered the rim with his hand.

‘And something else?’ prompted Zenin.

From another pocket Lyudin withdrew the key to the corner apartment overlooking the Palais des Nations and said: ‘I hope you will be comfortable there.’

Zenin wondered what the fool imagined he would be using the place for. He said: ‘How long have you been on station?’

‘Here in Bern for two years,’ said Lyudin. ‘I am hopeful of getting Washington, upon reassignment.’

Hope in vain, thought Zenin. He said: ‘I wish you luck.’

‘There have been no other instructions from Moscow,’ said Lyudin, ‘but if there is any sort of assistance you require, I am, of course, at your disposal.’

The man spoke like an official report, thought Zenin. He said: ‘Nothing. Thank you.’

‘What is Moscow like under the new regime?’ asked Lyudin.

‘It has not affected us,’ said Zenin. ‘We are beyond government whims.’

‘Of course,’ accepted Lyudin, hurriedly. ‘I meant among the general public.’

‘I have no idea what happens among the general public,’ said Zenin. He was bored, wishing the time would pass. Lyudin proffered the bottle again and this time Zenin accepted.

‘Is there any communication you wish transmitted to Dzerzhinsky Square?’

‘You’ve been instructed to advise them of my being here?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s all.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘I would have told you if there were.’

‘Do you wish me to go with you from the building?’

‘Don’t be foolish,’ rejected Zenin, at once. ‘If Swiss counter-intelligence have identified you and we were observed leaving the embassy I would be linked by association, wouldn’t I? I want no KGB officer among the group at all.’

‘Do you want to establish any contact procedure between us?’

‘No,’ said Zenin.

‘It is almost time,’ said Lyudin.

Zenin sighed, relieved. He said: ‘There are to be no introductions or explanations.’

The diplomats and other normal embassy staff were already assembled when they reached the vestibule. As noon struck the group moved en bloc towards the exit and Zenin eased himself into the middle, not bothering with any farewell to the other KGB man. He carried the bag in his right hand, so it would be shielded by the people around him. The majority went to the left when they emerged on to Brunnadernain and Zenin stayed with them, not splitting away until he was about three hundred metres from the building. Having separated Zenin moved quickly to distance himself, cutting through side alleys and minor roads until he got to Marktgasse. There he caught a tram again because an attempt to follow any sort of stopping and starting public transport is more obvious than a continuously moving vehicle, like a taxi. Zenin positioned himself on a rear seat, convinced after the first hundred metres that he was not being pursued. Back at the garage he removed the tripod, the fixture screws, the harness and the handgun that he did not need for the test he intended, stacking them neatly in the corner, beneath a piece of canvas discarded by a previous occupant. The bag he put into the boot of the Peugeot, thrusting it as deeply as possible into the cavity created by the wheel arch.

Zenin drove hard but always within the legal limit towards the Oberland, the road running parallel with the river Aare. At Thun he skirted the lake to the south but at Interlaken swung north around the Brienzersee lake. At Brienz he put the car in a public park, took the bag from the boot and strode through the old, wooden-housed part of the town, knowing from the Kuchino instruction that it was the most direct route to the deepest of the forests.

At first the trails were wide and Zenin was concerned at the number of people who appeared to be using them. He cut once and then a second time on to smaller paths, pushing deeper among the trees, at times so tall and thick he had no sight at all of the towering Jungfrau mountain. He climbed steadily for over an hour, transferring the bag from hand to hand as the weight of the rifle began to tell, alert more to the possibility of climbers or hikers than to the sort of testing place he wanted. Zenin was high above Brienz before he found it, an abrupt clearing that overlooked a small, tree-surrounded valley.

Zenin crouched, his back against the trunk of a fir, making no immediate attempt to assemble the rifle at his feet, listening and looking for people. There was some noise from rarely seen birds and an occasional murmur of insects but that was all. Around him the forest was dark and thick and apparently empty and at last he switched his concentration.

The assassination was calculated for him undetectably to be able to fire a maximum of five shots and Zenin isolated a clump of trees ideal for the target. He carried the bag with him, unwilling to risk leaving it unattended while he set up the markers.

Throughout his long practice with the M21 at Balashikha it had been assembled and every part so perfectly aligned that over four hundred and fifty metres his bulls-eye accuracy ran consistently at ninety nine per cent but the dismantling of the rifle would have disturbed that alignment. Zenin was determined to restore it although such a high accuracy achievement was not strictly necessary: the hollow-nose bullets he intended using flattened upon impact with a body and tore huge exit holes so death was practically automatic from shock, even if the hit itself was no more than a wounding shot.

The largest of the trees was slightly apart from the group he had selected and Zenin chose this to be the target to re-align the weapon. About six feet from the ground he stuck a six-inch square of paper over a jutting twig, pressing it against the rough bark of the tree and then looking back between it and the spot high up in the clearing from which he intended to fire, gauging the sightlines. Satisfied, Zenin moved to the closer-together trees and arranged five more paper markers, at heights dictated by convenient twigs, the highest almost to that on the first tree, the lowest just over three feet from the ground.

Back up in the clearing Zenin squatted again, opening the bag at last and bringing out the parts in the order in which he wanted to rebuild the weapon. He slid the perfectly machined barrel into the modified stock, then connected the gas cylinder and after that the piston. He paused at the remaining fitments, gazing intently around to search for any people: at this moment, if someone stumbled upon him, Zenin could have been mistaken for a hunter, although a rather improperly dressed one. The adapted sight and the elongated sound suppressor identified the rifle as something altogether different and Zenin with it, which was why he had left in the locked security of the garage the most obvious pieces of sniper’s equipment. The forest remained dark and silent, but Zenin stayed motionless for a long time until he was sure. He screwed the power-increased sight on to the top of the M21 and finally twisted on the suppressor which extended the barrel practically half as much again, a reamed silencer that deadened the sound of the shot but in no way reduced or impaired the muzzle velocity. Zenin finally clipped in hard-nosed ammunition, not needing this time the shattering effect of the soft bullets.

Using the trunk of the tree against which he had rested as a support, Zenin focused the magnified sight on his first target, adjusting the two stadia to run either side of the paper, with the graticule at its bottom, and from the calibration was able to establish the distance precisely at three hundred and ninety metres. He took his time, snuggling the stock into his shoulder, his eyes unblinking against the magnification. The sound, when he fired, was hardly audible in the vastness of the forest, the merest phut, and Zenin was sure it would be even less in Geneva, masked by the sound of traffic on the Ferney highway. He missed the paper completely, by at least fifteen millimetres, frowning in irritation at the sideways pull. He readjusted the sight against the extension of the barrel and tightened by half a turn the suppressor’s linkage. The next shot was excellent, almost in the centre of the paper, re-establishing at once his ninety-nine per cent score. Cautious in everything, he fired again at the same target and again hit practically dead centre, the second shot actually enlarging the penetration of the first. Zenin smiled to himself, pleased at how quickly he had recovered. For the assassination itself the rifle would be further steadied by its mounting on the tripod and his physical attachment to it by the harness.

Zenin shifted slightly, bringing himself around to the tree clump but pulling briefly away from the weapon to establish a timing. He waited until the second sweep hand of his watch marked the twelve before hunching back into his sniper’s crouch and loosing off five shots in quick succession, each time having slightly to bring himself around, to the separate pieces of paper. He hit each one, again with ninety per cent accuracy, and when he checked his watch he saw it had taken one minute ten seconds, which was the timing average he had created for himself during the Balashikha training.

Zenin replaced the assembled rifle in the bag, made specifically-to-measure to accommodate it, and walked once more across the tiny valley. Two of the pieces of paper had been blown off the trees by the force of the impact. Zenin collected them and removed the four still attached to their twigs, standing back to examine the bullet holes. Each was neatly drilled into the trunks and from a few metres were practically indiscernible to anyone not positively seeking them. Better, he decided, to leave the bullets embedded than attempt to dig them out. Widening the holes would make them more visible.

Zenin reclimbed the hill to the clearing for the last time, at its top finding the narrow trail that would eventually return him to Brienz. Not much longer now, he thought. And tomorrow the meeting with Sulafeh Nabulsi.

A twice-daily courier system was established between the US embassy in Bern and the advanced American contingent, to ferry back and forth by car the restricted contents of the diplomatic pouch and it was on the second delivery that Roger Giles received the letter from Barbara, setting out the lawyer’s opinion that there were insufficient grounds for the divorce. It was a long letter: freed from the constraining embarrassment of a personal confrontation the woman put on paper what she had been unable so far to say. She wrote that she did not know what had brought about the crisis of their marriage but that she did not want it to end: that she was apportioning neither blame nor responsibility to anything or anybody but that if he had complaints about her she would do her best to rectify them, if only they could talk instead of letting things drift, pulling them further apart.

It was a plea Giles recognized. And to which he responded because he, too, found it easier to write than he did to talk. He said he did not want their marriage to end, either: that he had gone along with the idea of dissolution because he’d imagined that was what she had wanted. He assured her the faults weren’t her’s, not any of them. The problem was his absolute and precluding ambition within the Agency, which he realized now to be wrong and for which he apologized, in a plea of his own, asking her to forgive him for his stupidity. He was due leave, he reminded her: and not just this year’s allocation but time he’d refused to take the previous year because he did not want to be away from Langley for longer than a couple of weeks. He’d already told her the job in Switzerland had a definite cut-off date. Why didn’t she fly to Europe and they’d take the vacation they’d always talked about but never achieved, driving to Italy and to France and maybe Germany, too? Nothing planned, just handling each day as it came.

‘I love you, my darling,’ he wrote. ‘Forgive me. Learn to love me again.’

There was another communication addressed personally to him in that second delivery, official this time. It had been easy to trace Klaus Schmidt from the arriving flight immigration form, as the Englishman had predicted. Schmidt was a 65-year-old Swiss-German banker with scarcely any head hair but a neatly clipped and precise beard and could hardly have been more different from the picture that had been taken in London’s Primrose Hill. The man was staying at one of the larger suites at the UN Plaza Hotel, which he customarily did during his quarterly visit to New York for business meetings with his bank’s Wall Street division. He’d never heard of Geneva’s Bellevue Hotel and certainly never stayed there.

Giles discarded the report onto the table of his own hotel suite, shaking his head at the ease with which the apparent Swiss breakthrough had been demolished. Charlie Muffin had been damned smart, seeing through it as quickly as he had. A clever guy. Giles thought of his sealed and sincere letter to Barbara, with its promises to resist in the future the 24-hour-a-day demands from the CIA. It was a CIA demand that he rejected the Englishman, he remembered: treat as hostile had been the message. Giles recognized that to be a demand he could not resist but he would have liked to have done. He thought Charlie Muffin was a funny looking son-of-a-bitch, like a rag picker on a Calcutta rubbish tip, but the guy sure as hell appeared to know his business. If this conference were as important as Langley and the State Department kept insisting and the threat to it were as real as it could easily be, Charlie Muffin seemed to be the sort of person whom they should have taken on board with open arms, not given the bum’s rush. What was past was past: Giles was concerned with the immediate future. And worried about it.

*

Sulafeh Nabulsi tingled with anticipation, walking out of the post office with the letter tight beneath her arm. She found the café where she had sat, legs outstretched, that first day and was aware of the slight shake in her hand when she opened the envelope. It was just a single, unsigned sheet of paper, with the name of another café, one on the Rue des Terreaux du Temple. Against it was the time of 3 p.m. Beside the name of her hotel 2 p.m. was written. And there was a date, that of the following day. She stared down at it, memorizing every curve in the script, for several moments. Then, at last, she crumpled it into a ball, touched it with a lighted match advertising the place in which she sat and watched it burn into blackened ashes, which she crumbled into dust between her fingers.