The Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum Read Free Book Online Page B

the good fight and tried. For old time’s sake, naturally.”
    “If you’re not drunk, you’re off your trolley.”
    “The track veered; those wheels you spun couldn’t take the curve.”
    “Cut the horseshit!”
    “What a dated phrase, Charlie. These days we say bullshit, although I prefer lizardshit—”
    “That’s enough! Your action—or should I say
in
action—compromised a vital aspect of counterespionage.”
    “Now,
you
cut the horseshit!” roared Bray, taking an ominous step toward the man from State. “I’ve heard all I want to hear from you! I didn’t compromise anything.
You
did! You and the rest of those bastards back there. You found an ersatz leak in your godamned sieve and so you had to plug it up with a corpse. Then you could go to the Forty Committee and tell
those
bastards how efficient you were!”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The old man
was
a defector. He was reached, but he
was
a
defector.
”
    “What do you mean ‘reached’?”
    “I’m not sure; I wish I did. Somewhere in that Four-Zero dossier something was left out. Maybe a wife that never died, but was in hiding. Or grandchildren no one bothered to list. I don’t know, but it’s there. Hostages,Charlie! That’s why he did what he did. And I was his
listok.
”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “For Christ’s sake, learn the language. You’re supposed to be an expert.”
    “Don’t pull that language crap on me, I
am
an expert. There’s no evidence to support an extortion theory, no family reported or referred to by the target at any time. He was a dedicated agent for Soviet intelligence.”
    “
Evidence?
Oh, come on, Charlie, even you know better than that. If he was good enough to pull off a defection, he was smart enough to bury what had to be buried. My guess is that the key was timing, and the timing blew up. His secret—or secrets—were found out. He was reached; it’s all through his dossier. He lived abnormally, even for an abnormal existence.”
    “We rejected that approach,” said Charlie emphatically. “He was an eccentric.”
    Scofield stopped and stared “You rejected?… An eccentric? Godamn you, you
did
know. You could have
used
that, fed him anything you liked. But no, you wanted a quick solution so the men upstairs would see how good you were. You could have
used
him, not killed him! But you didn’t know how, so you kept quiet and called out the hangmen.”
    “That’s preposterous. There’s no way you could prove he’d been reached.”
    “Prove it? I don’t have to prove it, I know it.”
    “How?”
    “I saw it in his eyes, you son of a bitch.”
    The man from State paused, then spoke softly. “You’re tired, Bray. You need a rest.”
    “With a pension,” asked Scofield, “or with a casket?”

4
    Taleniekov walked out of the restaurant into a cold blast of wind that disturbed the snow, swirling it up from the sidewalk with such force that it became a momentaryhaze, diffusing the light of the streetlamp above. It was going to be another freezing night. The weather report on Radio Moscow had the temperature dropping to minus eight Celsius
    Yet it had stopped snowing early that morning; the runways at Sheremetyevo Airport were cleared and that was all that concerned Vasili Taleniekov at the moment. Air France, Flight 85, had left for Paris ten minutes ago. Aboard that plane was a Jew who was meant to leave two hours later on Aeroflot for Athens.
    He would not have left for Athens if he had shown up at the Aeroflot terminal. Instead, he would have been asked to step into a room. Greeting him would have been a team from the Vodennaya Kontra Rozvedka, and the absurdity would have begun.
    It was stupid, thought Taleniekov, as he turned right, pulling the lapels of his overcoat up around his neck and the brim of his
addyel
lower on his head. Stupid in the sense that the VKR would have accomplished nothing but provide a wealth of embarrassment. It would have fooled no one, least of all