The Destroyer - 78 - The Destroyer 078 - Blue Smoke and Mirrors by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:52:07+00:00

Chapter 12

Ma­jor Yuli Batenin hummed “Moscow Nights” con­tent­ed­ly. He looked for­ward to go­ing home af­ter so long.

Most would con­sid­er the Wash­ing­ton-​em­bassy post the plum as­sign­ment in the So­vi­et diplo­mat­ic corps. Or in the KGB, for that mat­ter, for Yuli Batenin was first and fore­most KGB sta­tion chief in Wash­ing­ton. He was at­tached to the So­vi­et em­bassy as charge d’af­faires.

But as the white em­bassy com­pound re­ced­ed in the nar­row rear win­dow of the am­bas­sador’s Lin­coln Con­ti­nen­tal, Yuli Batenin did not look back. Wash­ing­ton was fine. Amer­ica was fas­ci­nat­ing, but this par­tic­ular as­sign­ment had gone on too long. When he reached Moscow and hand­ed over the lat­est plun­der from U.S. in­stal­la­tions, Batenin would re­quest a new post­ing. Three years was enough.

Of course his KGB su­pe­ri­ors would ask him why.

And Ma­jor Batenin would tell them. He was cer­tain they would un­der­stand.

It was not Amer­ica, he would say in the dusha-​dushe-​heart-​to-​heart-​talk he en­vi­sioned. It was not the em­bassy. It was not even the de­vi­ous Cap­tain Rair Brash­nikov. Ex­act­ly. Batenin could han­dle the diminu­tive thief. True, it was an­noy­ing to have to search Brash­nikov’s room when he was away in or­der to re­cov­er per­son­al ef­fects be­long­ing to the em­bassy staff, but it was a small price to pay for the great tech­no­log­ical gains that were be­ing re­al­ized through Op­er­ation Nim­ble Spir­it. Batenin un­der­stood that. Cer­tain sac­ri­fices were nec­es­sary.

It was not that he would have to re­port that af­ter near­ly three years of un­sus­pect­ed op­er­ations, their agent had been seen. He had not been cap­tured. He had not been iden­ti­fied. No one even knew he was a Rus­sian, so far as Batenin knew. True, for the first time, stolen U.S. prop­er­ty had not been de­liv­ered to the em­bassy on sched­ule. No doubt those items were now in the hands of puz­zled Amer­ican CIA agents.

That was ac­cept­able. Ma­jor Batenin felt cer­tain that one blem­ish in what was oth­er­wise the most flaw­less long-​term KGB op­er­ation ev­er con­duct­ed in the west­ern hemi­sphere would be over­looked.

But, Batenin in­tend­ed to say, there were some things that were too much to bear.

It was sim­ply, Yuli Batenin con­sid­ered as he watched the im­mac­ulate shrub­bery of Wash­ing­ton streak by the tint­ed car win­dow, the Jaws trav­el case hand­cuffed to his left wrist, that things had got­ten just too strange.

His su­pe­ri­ors would nat­ural­ly have an an­swer to that. Of course it is strange, they might say. You have charge of an agent who walks through walls and can­not be touched by hu­man hands.

Batenin would re­ply that he had got­ten used to that. It had be­come al­most nor­mal.

What was not nor­mal was near­ly suc­cumb­ing to a heart at­tack from sim­ply an­swer­ing the tele­phone. That was not nor­mal. It was too much. He would not want to go through it again. In fact, he had de­vel­oped night­mares as a re­sult. Now when the phone rang, Ma­jor Yuli Batenin would jump like a star­tled cat.

For Ma­jor Batenin, gen­er­al­ly re­gard­ed as one of the KGB’s best sta­tion chiefs, had de­vel­oped a se­vere tele­phone pho­bia.

It had hap­pened two days ago, and Yuli still shiv­ered at the mem­ory.

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