style="font-size:15px;"> She avoided the lift, which might again be stopping only at every other floor, and walked up the two flights of broad stone stairs. Big muscles in her calves and thighs raised her; she enjoyed feeling them work. She wore clothes picked up in London, “the Raisa Look,” everybody now mad to imitate Gorbachev’s wife.
“Go right in,” the secretary said. She was younger, inexplicably severe-looking; Darya, by keeping her supplied with perfume and little favors, had overcome that severity and now got special bits of gossip from her, preferred access to her boss.
Director Yakoblov was sitting at his desk with his face down in a file, his bald spot pointed at her. He had a cold. He breathed heavily and blew his nose into a tissue and swore. A plastic bag at his feet was half filled with soiled tissues.
“What have you got?” he said.
“You should be in bed,” she said; between them, such words had no sexual connotation.
“Rotten, simply rotten,” he said. “But if I stayed home, they’d think I wasn’t indispensable, and then you’d have my job. What have you got?”
“Efremov.”
He groaned.
“You directed me to look into his disappearance.”
“I know what I did! My God, Ouspenskaya—!” He clutched his forehead. “Aaah! I need antibiotics, they give me decongestants! Well?”
“He seems to be gone. His apartment has not been visited in three days. I ordered an entry; I have the report, but the essence is his clothes and so on are there, as is money, keys, even a passport.” She paused.
“Go on, go on.” He blew his nose.
“He has a second flat near the Gorki statue, under the name Platonov. Internal Security had it wired; I suspect he knew all that. Not a beginner, after all. He had a woman there sometimes, always the same. A little delicate.”
The Director looked at her over another white tissue.
“The daughter of Malenkov the gangster. We assume the other listening devices were his.”
He blew his nose. “Continue.”
“I interviewed her myself. She is terrified of her father. She is married to one of his boys; one or the other will kill her if they find out about Efremov, she says. As if Papa didn’t already know. She hasn’t seen him in—” she checked her notes “—ten days. She was to meet him at the flat three days ago but he didn’t appear. That checks out with Internal’s records—she was there for an hour alone, then left. Anyway, she doesn’t know where he is, she says, has no plans to meet him in some other place, and so on and so on.”
“You believe her?”
“Oh, yes. She’s a scared little thing. I threatened her a bit, she almost fainted. She needs to be questioned by somebody with more time than I have, really go over everything, her memory might turn up a clue. But we’d have to promise her something good—protection from her husband, maybe. Maybe her father, as well.”
He waved a tissue.
She looked up at him. He stopped sniffling and stared back. “I’ve had a look at his computer files. Surprisingly—mm—bland. I make no judgments, as you know, but—if I were the famous Sherlock Holmes, I would say they are significant for the fact that they are so insignificant.”
“Well, after all, his agents are run by underlings. He has how many agents?”
“He claims eighty.”
The Director looked up. “‘Claims’?”
Ouspenskaya, with a tiny shrug, said, “We pay for eighty; I am not entirely convinced that I see the files for eighty.”
The Director nodded, gloomy, as if his worst fears about her cynicism were confirmed.
“No evidence in his shredder or the burn box. By that, I mean only that there is no indication that this was a man preparing to leave. Everything points rather to a man who, mm, is not with us against his will.”
She looked, waited. The Director opened a drawer and took out a nasal spray, stuck it up one nostril and shut the other with a finger. “Continue,” he said. He sprayed.
“His computer may have been purged of some files. It’s hard to say, impossible for me, in fact; I’m not an expert. That computer, as I’ve told you a thousand times, is an antique and not to be trusted. American secretaries have better computers on their desks than you and I have in our—” He was waving his free hand at her, meaning Shut up, shut up, I’ve heard it over and over. “Well. The sum and substance is that Efremov has disappeared and I’ve found no evidence of anything. He’s gone. Kaput. Disappeared. What is it the British say? ‘Done a bunk’?”
“‘Taken a powder,’ the Americans say. A colloquialism I don’t understand at all.”
“Face powder? Or, sleeping draughts used to be called powders. Quite nonsensical.”
The Director threw himself back so hard that his chair springs made a catlike noise; he sniffed, then worked his nose up and down. “Efremov,” he said. “I like him. I trust him. Don’t you trust him?”
“He is devoted to his work.” She knew that she would gain no advantage with this man by claiming to have suspicions. In fact, she was afraid of Efremov and stayed away from him.
“All right. What are your suspicions?”
“Director! You hurt my feelings. Why must I have suspicions?”
He cleared his throat, like a man preparing to spit. “Between ourselves,” he said, “I admire your suspicious nature. Tell me what you think. I won’t necessarily believe you.”
She stared at the distant window. “I surprise myself by having no suspicions. Odd. I think I don’t know enough yet. But that makes me suspicious, because I have been looking into the man’s life for two days and it is all—bland. Like the creation of a perfect bureaucrat. And why not? Colonel Efremov has a splendid record, some might say brilliant; he has no ‘past,’ no quirks, no secret life except the girlfriend. Still—” Her voice trailed off. “He has decentralized his work over the past four years. One might say it is an example of perestroika. Or one might say it is the opposite—obfuscation. He has divided his agents into somewhat irregular groups for purposes of administration and created his own sub-sections to handle them. Nothing wrong, exactly, but—he has followed the CIA model of creating false entities, companies on the new free-market model, and using them to mask his organizations. Nothing wrong, but they are a little difficult to track.”
“Accountability?” the Director said hoarsely.
“Financing, to be sure.”
“False agents?” The Director sounded heart-broken.
“I have no evidence of such a thing. But—!” She stood up. “Suppose the girl’s gangster father learned something, maybe from her, maybe with his taps, maybe somewhere else—let’s say that he learned that
