Black Gambit Read online

  At a command from the major, the men and — Pavlinov noticed for the first time — one woman took up positions in the flat.

  ‘This,’ said Zorin, ‘is an outrage.’ He had been half expecting such a visit. Solzhenitsyn’s arrest and expulsion eleven days before was but the most spectacular of this latest wave of attacks against the dissidents; Zorin had heard of raids on perhaps twenty homes in the last week.

  He walked across to the telephone. ‘Violating my home is a flagrant breach of the Constitution. You are acting illegally.’

  He picked up the telephone, started to dial, realized there was no tone.

  The major stepped forward and took the receiver from his hand.

  ‘I must ask you to behave reasonably.’ He took a paper from his pocket. ‘As you see, we have a warrant.’

  ‘You had no need to break the door,’ said Zorin.

  The reply was so swift that it could have been memorized and rehearsed: ‘We forced the door because we had reason to believe you might harm yourself if you were forewarned of our presence.’

  The major began to take off his coat. He gestured to the men to begin their search.

  ‘May I see the warrant?’ asked Zorin. Tanya had moved beside him.

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘All it says is that it is in connection with Case 68. What is that?’

  The major took back the paper. ‘You have seen the warrant. You will now please sit down and be quiet while we search.’

  They began with the pictures. Zorin had learned from experience that, after the initial protest, it was best to try to be calm.

  What did they expect to find when they removed the paintings from the walls? Secret messages? Hidden safes?

  Books were removed from shelves; there were nods from the major when works printed in the West were brought to him. These together with foreign magazines — Paris Match, Nature even an old copy of the New Yorker — were piled on the floor to be bundled and taken away.

  The major began to go through Zorin’s desk papers. He found two passports and flicked through them: dates of marriage, jobs held with their dates, details of travel … Under entry number 3, Zorin’s ethnic origin was given as ‘Russian’; his wife’s entry said simply ‘Yevrey’.

  Jew.

  The major forced himself not to voice aloud the thought that, on the evidence of the passport entries alone, Zorin was guilty of at least the crime of parasitism. By law anyone who did not work voluntarily for more than thirty days was subject to internment in a labour camp or to exile.

  In the bedroom the mattress was removed and prodded. On a shelf one of the searchers found a small Japanese tape-recorder. He pressed a button, listened for a moment, carried it to the major.

  The voice was unmistakable. The writer Gallich. Similar tapes had been found in the homes of many intellectuals.

  When there were not tapes there were often transcripts of the words. Once Gallich had been a successful playwright; now he wrote and sang these simple songs lampooning Soviet life.

  My hand had grown thin from shaking hands goodbye

  Leave, but I’ll remain,

  In this land I’ll remain.

  Someone must disdain weariness

  And stand watch over the peace of our dead.

  The major switched off the machine.

  The search lasted just over three hours. In the end there were seven piles of belongings stacked near the door — records, books, notes, photographs, magazines.

  Zorin was frightened. The KGB has never before removed so many of his possessions. There had been the odd notebook, an imported novel — even, once, a street map of Moscow, printed in Hungary and given to Zorin by a visiting friend because maps were so hard to obtain in Russia. Zorin, wondering whether the items now gathered together would ever be returned, said nothing.

  His possessions were thrown into sacks. The sacks removed.

  Zorin and his wife sat waiting for the KGB men to go. His arm was around her shoulders and he felt her trembling, not, he knew, with fear but with rage. He smiled down at her, at the delicate face with the high cheekbones and the skin that looked as though it had never seen sun. He never ceased to marvel at the contradiction between the way she looked and moved and her immense inner strength. Many times he had drawn from that strength, felt himself recharged by her calmness and optimism.

  It seemed the search was almost over. The KGB men, thought Zorin, were waiting only for the return of the major. He had left the flat, no doubt to call his superiors.

  When the major came back he was abrupt. ‘You will come with me.’

  Zorin squeezed Tanya, released her and stood.

  To her he said, ‘You know who to call.’

  He nodded to the major to signify he was ready.

  ‘No,’ said the major. ‘You don’t understand. You will both come with me.’

  Zorin felt the anger rising. ‘Why her? What has she done?’

  He felt Tanya reach for and squeeze his hand.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispered.

  The major’s voice softened. ‘Your wife is right. Please, do not refuse. I would only have to insist. I do not want to have you dragged to the car.’

  Outside, the streets were being cleared of snow. The Zorins were placed in separate cars. ‘Where are you taking us?’ asked Zorin. No one answered. The other car moved off.

  ‘Where is my wife going?’

  ‘Lefortovia,’ answered the driver.

  ‘Quiet!’ snapped the major. ‘No one will speak to the prisoner.’

  The word made Zorin shudder. ‘So I am a prisoner?’ It was a silly remark, he knew, but it was easier to speak than remain silent.

  Chapter Two

  ROBERT SUNNENDEN squared the files on the right hand corner of his desk and admired again his new office.

  When Henry Kissinger had become Secretary of State, Robert Sunnenden had moved with him from the White House to the State Department. He preferred his new quarters at State. They were larger and more luxurious and he was a man who believed in the signs of status. More important, he felt removed from the stigma of Watergate.

  As a member of Kissinger’s staff Sunnenden had no direct contact with the scandal. But as the months went by, Watergate affected everyone in the building. It was, he had explained to Janet, like being a non-smoker in a room where others were smoking cigars. To outsiders, your clothes reeked of tobacco smoke too.

  On the morning of February 24 Sunnenden had more than his office to please him. It really began to look as though he was a coming man. Two days before he learned that he was expected to join Kissinger on his new mission to the Middle East. And he was working today, a Sunday, only because the Secretary had singled him out.

  Kissinger was lunching later in the day with the Egyptian Foreign Minister. Sunnenden had been asked to briefly set down the likely major developments in the Middle East now, some five months after the Yom Kippur War. The request came at the last minute, almost as an afterthought. But he had been asked, and that was what mattered.

  Sunnenden had just finished. His memorandum was short but he had been working on it virtually non-stop since the telephone call last night. The Secretary might only glance at it, or ignore it completely — but if he read it, the report had to be good.

  Now the note was on its way to Kissinger’s home. Sunnenden sat at his desk, re-reading a carbon copy. He nodded. Yes, it was good. Short, but not too short. Dogmatic? Certainly, but justified by his knowledge of US-Soviet affairs. His note concentrated on the Middle East in that context — his own speciality and, fortunately, Dr. Kissinger’s major interest.

  It was not yet 10.30. Sunnenden was reluctant to go home despite his exhaustion. The boys would be out swimming. Friends were coming to brunch at one. There was nothing to do until then. He could lie on a sofa and read The Post. But the building held him. The near emptiness, the quiet, made it and the few people there special.

  Besides, he had to admit to himself that
there was some relief in being away from Janet for a few hours, much as he treasured her and their marriage. Her belief in him, her ambition for his future, had always been one of the characteristics about her that most pleased him; no-one had shown them before. But since the occasion six months before when he had bungled a key assignment for the Secretary — through overconfidence he had prepared a brief that neglected to take two major points into account — it had become one that harassed him. He felt driven, not urged: under constant test. When she had learned of the Middle East trip, ancj then this latest task, her reaction had been not of contentment but of concern that he should not make another mistake.

  Sunnenden forced his mind back to the office, slightly guilty at his thoughts. He owed Janet a lot. He carefully squared the carbon copy, knowing that he would take it home for her to read.

  His desk was nearly empty, as always. It was one of the traits that had led colleagues at Defense to call him, not lovingly, the Computer. The other was his gift for producing, assembling and analyzing facts at very short notice.

  He knew what they called him — and why — but he was proud of the nickname. His methods made sense. You completed one task and then started another. If, occasionally, you had to lay aside a task for a more urgent one, you left the papers in full view as a constant reminder to get the job done as soon as possible.

  There was one such reminder in front of him now: a buff folder filled with photostats, newspaper clippings, extracts from embassy reports, and notes. Sunnenden carried it to the window. Outside, Washington was almost deserted.

  Being one of the few people working that day gave him a warm feeling of self-importance. Sunnenden was not short — he was a little over medium height — but he behaved like a small man, pushing, fighting to prove his worth. The son of a naval petty officer, he had gone to the wrong colleges, grown up with the wrong people — and battled his parents’ fear that he was too ambitious. That was where Janet’s convictions of his talents and future, forcibly voiced, had been so important.

  Sunnenden walked across to an easy chair and looked around the room. This was the first time in his life he had had an office on which he could impose his own personality — or, rather, the personality he wanted to communicate.

  He tried to wear his surroundings like a well-tailored suit. Janet had helped him decorate the room: the piece of Eskimo sculpture on the coffee table, the plaster bust of Karl Marx set next to the rows of books on Communism and Russia, the computer drawings on the wall …

  No matter what they said, he had made it. He’d done well at Defense, even if he had been disliked. Now, thanks to Allan Scott, he could do even better.

  Sunnenden lifted the file. He would, he decided, spend an hour or two working on it. He could then have his notes waiting on Scott’s desk the next morning.

  Sunnenden took his spectacles from his shirt pocket, perched them near the end of his nose and glanced at the first page of the file.

  The dossier concerned Russian dissidents. Most of the data was familiar: Solzhenitsyn’s expulsion and his progress through Europe; other arrests, still it seemed, continuing; feature articles on psychiatric hospitals in the USSR … Separate reports outlined reactions to the Soviet Union’s moves against dissidents. Another report, put together by the C.I.A. with the help of a ‘friendly’ journalist, covered the thinking of the powerful American Jewish interests and their various possible reactions.

  Sunnenden read quickly, making terse notes on the cover of the folder. Scott had asked him to look at the subject, and it was Scott, after all, who had brought Sunnenden into the Kissinger team. It was Scott too who had nursed him back into the Secretary’s favour after his mistake. By helping Sunnenden to get good assignments, by feeding him useful pieces of information and advice, and by making judicious remarks to others whose views the Secretary also regarded highly, Scott had led the younger man to his present potentially important spot. This time Sunnenden was determined not to fail.

  Sunnenden also had to admit it was rewarding to work for Scott. You got feedback, he told you what he thought. Kissinger rarely reacted to anything you did unless it was so bad that he cursed you out publicly.

  Scott was in the Secretary’s close inner circle, one of the few with direct access to him and, rarer still, one who did not hesitate to tell him the full, unsugared truth. It was Sunnenden’s luck that Scott had been present at a Senate Committee hearing at which he had given evidence on the United States’ missile capabilities vis-a-vis those of the Soviets. Scott had been impressed, and as a result Sunnenden had moved from Defense to State.

  Scott’s job was not defined anywhere. In the internal telephone directory he was described as ‘special assistant to the Secretary of State’. He was, in fact, Kissinger’s contact with the world, with Congress, with the lobbyists — even with his own staff. The Secretary knew how to save the United States and the world; Scott made sure that no one stepped in the way.

  That was why Sunnenden was now poring through the file on dissidents. Scott was concerned about the different American-Jewish pressure groups, to his mind both powerful and effective. Scott wanted Sunnenden’s views on what the Soviets were likely do next. Did the sudden clampdowns, beginning with Solzhenitsyn and followed by a mass of less publicized arrests, reflect a real change in Soviet attitudes?

  Re-reading the clippings Sunnenden decided that in the Soviet position he would probably have taken the same action they had against Solzhenitsyn. They could not let him continue; imprisoning him again would have placed the Soviets in a near-impossible diplomatic position. He was not so sure, though, that he would have followed the writer’s expulsion with further arrests. He could see their reasoning: a series of sharp blows to warn the dissidents that the gloves were off. And he deduced that the Soviets expected the Western press to be so full of Solzhenitsyn that the other twenty to thirty arrests and expulsions would attract little attention.

  To a large degree they had been right. Public attention had concentrated on Solzhenitsyn. But — and it was here that they had miscalculated — influential groups and individuals in the West had noted each new event. One great flaw in the Soviet decision-making process, he thought — not for the first time — was the inability to understand the strength of pressure groups on Western politicians who had to get re-elected.

  To many people it had been the proof they sought that the Soviets really were bastards. To others — it was confirmation of a conviction that the Soviets, not content with destroying the Jews in the Middle East through their Arab puppets, wanted to annihilate them in Russia.

  Many American-Jewish interest groups were particularly sensitive just now — cognizant of the fact that Israel itself was going through its greatest crisis since independence, and also deeply suspicious of Kissinger. To some of them he was a reluctant Jew leaning over backwards to act pro-Arab.

  Scott’s concerns were twofold: to protect the policies that the Secretary — and he — believed in, and to anticipate and negate any attacks that might be brewing. Watergate made it all harder. Dr. Kissinger himself was riding high at the moment, but the press and the people were now ready to tear down their leaders.

  Sunnenden returned to his desk and dictated a one page memorandum. The Soviet actions, he said, would undoubtedly create extra tensions and resultant pressures at home among some legislators. To counter this, some token gesture might be politically useful. Perhaps, for example, the question of the rights of dissidents could again be raised with the Soviet Ambassador. Such a step, he thought, would not have any practical effect. But if the attempt could be given full publicity, perhaps that alone would be helpful at home.

  Sunnenden, dictating in clipped tones, went on without pause to the second half of his memorandum: his assessment of the Soviets’ future policy on the subject and its implications for the United States. He was brief and dogmatic. The hard-line attitude at home was meant to satisfy the Soviet hawks, but it should mean that their leaders could practise a softer line
abroad. On the dissident question much, of course, depended on how long the arrests continued, how widespread they were, and just who they included. But he would expect it to be comparatively short lived, to be followed by a quiet period and then, ultimately, by even more repressive policies.

  Sunnenden played back the tape, decided he was satisfied, and locked the cassette in the wall safe for transcription the next morning.

  By the time he had checked out past the guard, he had dismissed the subject. He was thinking about travelling with the Secretary to the Middle East.

  *

  The major remained silent as the car headed north through the Moscow streets past the Academy of Arts, the Tolstoi Museum and the Soviet Peace Committee. There was a strong smell of human bodies in the car.

  Traffic was surprisingly heavy and despite the five lanes the car had to slow at the busy corner with Kalinin Prospekt. As they neared Gorky Street, the major muttered something to the driver. The next moment Zorin heard the siren. Other cars pulled to the side and the Chaika swept through on the outside lane.

  Zorin’s main anxiety was for Tanya. On previous occasions they had left her alone. His worry for her was almost a sickness in his stomach. If they hurt her …

  The heater had cleared the side windows of ice. Zorin could now see the massive granite statue of Karl Marx opposite the Bolshoi and their destination became obvious. It was confirmed when the car began to slow in Dzerzhinsky Square. Above it towered another statue, of Dzerzhinsky himself, the first post-Revolu-tionary head of secret police.

  They reached a courtyard in the old section. A militiaman examined papers and then the car was through. On one side of the courtyard was Zorin’s destination, Lubyanka Prison.

  For the first time he began to feel real fear, for himself as well as Tanya.

  Zorin was handed over at the entrance, like a parcel. Two warders, obviously expecting him, singed a paper which the major folded and placed in his breast pocket. For a moment it looked as though he would speak; then he turned and walked back to the car.