Untraceable

CHAPTER 12

Shershnev opened the railway line magazine. He needed a distraction. An ad: a happy couple running along a white sand beach, a hammock, a bottle of wine, palm trees. Reduced fares on direct flights to Asia.

He was unhappy from the start with the travel plan imposed by the bosses and the cover story they provided. He would have done it fast, in one day. Fly in, complete the op, fly out. That’s how the agents from the neighbors took out Vyrin.

But they came up with an allegedly touristic route for them—probably because of the scandal that followed Vyrin’s death and the increased counterintelligence regimen. They land in one country, sort of coming in through the back door; travel to another country, rent a car there… It might be good for covering up their intention, but the route was too long and fraught with problems, missed connections, inevitable in travel.

And so it began. They had printed tickets for the train, car 2, seats 49 and 47. When the train pulled into the station, there was no car 2: 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.

He ran with Grebenyuk to the locomotive: Maybe there was another train right ahead? And then came the cars numbered in the twenties? No, the numbering started with car 22.

It wasn’t a trap. Not a trick. Just the usual stupidity, a glitch in the reservations system. Shershnev saw the train was full and didn’t know if they would be allowed to board with the wrong tickets. Back home he would have shown his ID and they would be found seats in business class. But here? What if they had to go get new tickets?

It all worked out, of course. The conductor apologized and told them to take any seat they could. But Shershnev couldn’t get rid of the feeling that there was a weak but clear resistance to their mission, emanating from no one, coming out of nowhere. That happens in the spring sometimes, when you go out skiing in the morning and the snow starts getting sticky in the sunshine—not enough to slow the skis but enough to lose the smoothness and ease, and you need to exert more effort.

Shershnev knew that the subject had taken the same path many years ago. Allegedly on a business trip to negotiate the purchase of equipment. A delegation of a dozen or so. He probably would not have been allowed to go to America. Even in those lax times. But the subject traveled to a country that just a year or two ago had still been socialist. Where friendly security services were still in place; where Soviet intelligence had recently had not just a residency at the embassy but a full-fledged and, most important, legal presence. The subject moved into a hotel with the rest. He visited the manufacturing complex, had dinner with the group that evening. And he vanished during the night.

They established that he had gotten train tickets. Back then his route remained within the borders of one country. Today there were two states: they separated in 1993. No one knew whether the subject got off somewhere along the way or traveled to the end.

They were on the trail. The cold, scentless trail of the defector. Shershnev knew how to support and develop the connection between hunter and prey; he enjoyed shooting hares along the blacktop or chasing a fox. But now Shershnev did not want that connection to appear. He sensed that it was becoming two-sided, unlike his other missions.

He did not pity the subject and he was ready to execute the order. But he was beginning to understand him, since he had also lived in those ambiguous years and had experienced the same fear, when it seemed that the service he had just joined could be disbanded. He remembered the despair of his father who did not want to retreat, to remove the hammer and sickle badge from his cap, to change his military oath; the fear of informers afraid to inform, the fear of generals removed from staff, the fear of the recent coup plotters who ended up in prison. And that was nothing, there was even the fear of the guard dogs.

Shershnev understood clearly why the subject had defected. Yet that understanding was superfluous since it seemed to excuse the subject’s action. Grebenyuk was only five years younger. Not having witnessed that moment of weakness in the omnipotent service, Grebenyuk would not experience such doubts.

In the end, Shershnev did not have doubts, either. He was merely musing, but these thoughts seemed dangerous to him, for he was used to controlling his reflections; Grebenyuk had surely been told to watch his partner and would later write a report—as would he himself. Shershnev tried to push away the unsummoned thoughts so that not even a shadow of them crossed his face.

When he read the circumstances of the subject’s defection, Shershnev noted that some things were redacted. Not for secrecy, but because they created something like an alibi. Shershnev easily read between the lines, filling in the censored facts: the entire country was undergoing the same thing then and it was not hard to picture what had happened in the closed city.

Power outages. No more special food deliveries, empty shelves in stores. Delays in salary payments, which had turned into play money by then anyway. Talk that the closed city status would soon be removed. Paradise lost—they had been living there with everything done for them, unlike the entire country standing in lines.

More gaps in the wall around the city; they had stopped repairing it. Theft—from the workshops, from the lab. New companies, cooperatives, created by bosses embracing perestroika and grabbing up big pieces and crumbs for themselves. Cold radiators in winter.

According to the documents, the subject tried to adjust to the new life. A foreign commission on disarmament was allowed on the Island for the first time. They didn’t see anything, they weren’t allowed in the laboratory or the warehouses, but the fact itself was important. A trusted person reported that the subject tried to initiate contact with two of the inspectors. Both were known and there were reports on them.

The first was a real scientist and also a recruiter, who had been asked by interested Western firms to find suitable candidates, buy up some valuable brainpower, as well as do the inspection. The subject did not tell him what he really did, and the recruiter did not follow up.

The second was a real recruiter who had helped his country’s intelligence. He focused on scientists working on top-secret topics. The old man opened up to him and they had a conversation. The deal was almost done. But the security department interfered and they began investigating the subject.

Here came the most interesting episode. Formally, there was enough evidence to charge him for revealing state secrets, for “treason to the homeland,” which was then still subject to the death penalty. But the investigation was quickly ended. The old man got off with a reprimand—too easy even for those strange times.

Shershnev guessed the rest. A few months later a famous banker who knew the secret origins of some new fortunes was killed. The banker died quickly after a sudden collapse of his inner organs. The autopsy did not show poisoning, and the banker would have been buried if the investigators had not learned that his air conditioner had been repaired the day before; they found a small vial that was not part of the unit.

The case was reexamined three times, but never reached the courts. All the analyses were classified. The vial had been developed at the laboratory headed by the subject and was made for the remote use of exceptionally toxic substances; however, no trace of any substance was found. That was a trace in itself.

Pointing to Neophyte.

Untraceable and imperceptible—they were given a brief lecture on the contents of the vial.

It was obvious that the order had not come from the state, for then there would have been no investigation at all.

Someone had leaked the substance from the lab to the black market and it fell into the hands of amateurs. Rather, semiprofessionals who knew how to use it properly but failed to clear away the evidence.

A few months after the assassination, the subject, passive, used to life behind seven seals, and able to make contact only with two observers who had ended up on his doorstep, cleverly and efficiently made his escape. He took advantage of the security chief’s vacation, handed the newbie deputy faked arrangements for his trip and ran off.

The triangle was coming together. The subject had been forced to give up the substance and then was blackmailed with a charge of revealing a secret. He was probably also paid, paid a lot—his product was invaluable. Then when an internal investigation of the murder was started, the subject got spooked. He realized they could make him the scapegoat. Or quietly get rid of him to keep him from giving evidence. He took the money and the product and got away.

Who could have blackmailed him? It must have been the security chief. A colonel, an officer of the active reserve, who had joined state security through Party selection from the manufacturing sector. He had a degree in technology. He was quite capable of orienting himself in these new conditions, figuring out just what he was guarding, trapping the subject, and organizing the sale. Conveniently, the security chief could blame the theft on Kalitin when he defected. That’s probably why they allowed him to escape, Shershnev thought.

Wisely, Shershnev did not reveal any documented interest in the security chief. He thought he knew his name, a simple name like the ones given to them on their fake passports. He had seen it among other signatures on some secret agency document.

The former head of security, if he had returned from the active reserve, could be one of the people issuing the order to get rid of the subject.

That did not make the order illegal in Shershnev’s eyes. He would have executed a personal order from the bosses, unconnected to the interests of the service. For example, he would have killed that banker. But now he was feeling unwanted sympathy for the subject. They were connected like sound and echo, like a pair of substances composing a binary poison. The scientist created a substance, Shershnev deployed it; they shared all the real work, took the risk. Shershnev sensed it was wrong for them now to be once again forced together.

Shershnev looked at Grebenyuk. The major was asleep, or pretending to be. Neat little houses flashed by the windows. The conductor was serving coffee from the restaurant car. He stood up to stretch, rolled his shoulders, and the young woman across the aisle—in good shape, she probably worked out—gave him an understanding smile. Shershnev saw his reflection in the window out of the corner of his eye; the man at whom the woman smiled. Suddenly Shershnev wanted to remain as that person, an unknown passenger traveling from Point A to Point B, to get off the train with her in a suburb. With the full brunt of his character, Shershnev attacked himself for that thought. He felt anger rising against the subject, who had somehow tricked him into compassion.

The conductor mumbled the station name. Grebenyuk opened his eyes. One more stop, and then the end. The destination. Prague.