Free Icon by Frederick Forsyth

parks, of all ages and sizes, and all shabbily dressed. If, as he suspected, Zaitsev was now living on the streets, everyone would have to be examined. One of them would have three steel teeth and a black-covered file. Grishin wanted both and without delay. His bewildered but obedient Black Guards, in ordinary pants and shirts for the day was hot, fanned out through Moscow.
    Langley, December 1983
    JASON Monk rose from his desk, stretched, and decided to go down to the commissary. A month back from Nairobi, he had been told his performance reports were good and in some cases extremely so. Promotion was in the pipeline and the head of the Africa Division was pleased but would be sorry to lose him.
    Monk had arrived back to find himself assigned to the Spanish language course on which he would begin just after the Christmas and New Year break. Spanish would constitute his third foreign language, but more, it would open up the whole Latin American Division to him.
    South America was a big territory and an important one, for not only was it within the American backyard, as prescribed by the Monroe Doctrine, it was also a prime target for the Soviet bloc, which had targeted it for insurrection, subversion, and Communist revolution. As a result the KGB had a big operation south of the Rio Grande, one the CIA was determined to head off. For Monk at thirty-three South America was a good career move.
    He was stirring his coffee when he felt someone standing in front of his table.
    “Great suntan,” said a voice. He looked up. Monk recognized the man who was smiling down at him. He rose, but the man gestured him to stay seated, one of the aristocracy being nice to the peasants.
    Monk was surprised. He knew the speaker was one of the key men in the Ops Directorate, for someone had pointed him out in the corridor, the newly appointed head of the Soviet Branch, Counterintelligence Group of the Soviet/East European Division.
    What surprised Monk was how nondescript the man appeared. They were much the same height, two inches under six feet, but the other man, though nine years older, was well out of condition. Monk noticed the greasy hair slicked back straight from the forehead, the thick moustache covering the upper section of a weak and vain mouth, the owlish myopic eyes.
    “Three years in Kenya,” he said to explain the tan.
    “Back to wintry Washington, eh?” said the man. Monk’s antennae were giving him bad vibes. Behind the eyes there was a mockery. I’m a lot smarter than you, they seemed to be saying I m extremely smart indeed.
    “Yes, sir,” replied Monk. A heavily nicotine-stained hand came out. Monk noticed this and the maze of tiny capillaries round the base of the nose that often betrayed the heavy boozer. He rose and flashed a grin, the one the girls in the typing pool called among themselves the Redwood Special.
    “And you must be ... ?” said the man.
    “Monk. Jason Monk.”
    “Good to know you, Jason. I’m Aldrich Ames.”
    ¯
    NORMALLY, the embassy staff would not have been working on a Saturday—least of all, on a hot summer Saturday when they could have been off on a sylvan weekend—but the president’s death had produced a welter of extra work and weekend labors were required.
    If Hugo Gray’s car had started that morning, many men who later died would have stayed alive and the world would have taken a different course. But ignition solenoids are a law unto themselves. After frantically trying to get a reaction, Gray ran after the red Rover as it neared the barrier of the enclave and tapped on the window. Celia Stone gave him a lift.
    He sat beside her as she swerved out into Kutuzovsky Prospekt and headed past the Ukraina Hotel toward the Arbat and the Kremlin. His heels scuffed something on the floor. He stooped and retrieved it.
    “Your takeover bid for Izvestia?” he asked. She looked sideways and recognized the file he was holding.
    “Oh, God, I was going to trash it yesterday. Some old