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Kronsteen kneould be a waste of breath to apologize to the plain-clothes guard It would also be contrary to discipline After all, he was Head of the Planning Department of SMERSH, with the honorary rank of full Colonel And his brain orth diaue his way out of the azed out of theat the dark streets, already ith the work of the night cleaning squad, and bent his ht street at the end of which the moon rode fast between the onion spires of the Kreuard handed Kronsteen over to the ADC, he also handed the ADC a slip of paper The ADC glanced at it and looked coldly up at Kronsteen with half-raised eyebrows Kronsteen looked caled his shoulders and picked up the office telephone and announced hi room and Kronsteen had been waved to a chair and had nodded acknowledgment of the brief pursed smile of Colonel Klebb, the ADC went up to General G and handed him the piece of paper The General read it and looked hard across at Kronsteen While the ADC walked to the door and went out, the General went on looking at Kronsteen When the door was shut, General G opened his mouth and said softly, 'Well, Comrade?'

Kronsteen was calm He knew the story that would appeal He spoke quietly and with authority 'To the public, Coht I became Champion of Moscow for the third year in succession If, with only threemurdered outside the door of the Tournaer to save her My public know that They are as dedicated to the gaae, five thousand people would have known that it could only be on the orders of such a departossip My future goings and cos would have been watched for clues It would have been the end of my cover In the interests of State Security, I waited threethe order Even so, my hurried departure will be the subject of ravely ill I shall have to put a child into hospital for a week to support the story I deeply apologize for the delay in carrying out the order But the decision was a difficult one I did what I thought best in the interests of the Departhtfully into the dark slanting eyes The ain as if weighing up the size of the offence, then he took out his lighter and burned it He dropped the last burning corner on to the glass top of his desk and blew the ashes sideways on to the floor He said nothing to reveal his thoughts, but the burning of the evidence was all that o on his zapiska He was deeply relieved and grateful He would bend all his ingenuity to the reat clemency Kronsteen would repay him with the full coin of his raphs, Comrade Colonel,' said General G, as if the brief court-martial had not occurred 'The matter is as follows'

So it is another death, thought Kronsteen, as the General talked and he exaazed levelly at hiraph While Kronsteen listened with half his , he picked out the salient facts–English spy Great scandal desired No Soviet involvement Expert killer Weakness for woht Kronsteen) Drinks (but nothing is said about drugs) Unbribable (who knows? There is a price for every man) No expense would be spared All equipence departments Success to be achieved within three months Broad ideas required now Details to be worked out later

General G fastened his sharp eyes on Colonel Klebb 'What are your immediate reactions, Colass of the spectacles flashed in the light of the chandelier as the wohtened from her position of bowed concentration and looked across the desk at the General The pale moist lips below the sheen of nicotine-stained fur over therapidly up and down as the wo the face across the table, the square, expressionless opening and shutting of the lips reminded him of the boxlike jabber of a puppet

The voice was hoarse and flat and without emotion, 'rese If you re a reputation as well as a life On that occasion the matter was simple The spy was also a pervert If you recall'

Kronsteen stopped listening He knew all these cases He had handled the planning of most of theambits Instead, with closed ears, he examined the face of this dreadful woer she would last in her job–how er he would have to ith her

Dreadful? Kronsteen was not interested in hus–not even in his own children Nor did the categories of 'good' and 'bad' have a place in his vocabulary To him all people were chess pieces He was only interested in their reactions to the movements of other pieces To foretell their reactions, which was the greater part of his job, one had to understand their individual characteristics Their basic instincts were immutable Self-preservation, sex and the instinct of the herd–in that order Their tematic, choleric or ely decide the coth of his ereatly depend on upbringing and, whatever Pavlov and the Behaviourists ht say, to a certain extent on the character of the parents And, of course, people's lives and behaviour would be partly conditioned by physical strengths and weaknesses

It ith these basic classifications at the back of his mind that Kronsteen's cold brain considered the woman across the table It was the hundredth time he had summed her up, but now they had weeks of joint work in front of them and it was as well to refresh the memory so that a sudden intrusion of the human element in their partnership should not come as a surprise

Of course Rosa Klebb had a strong will to survive, or she would not have become one of the most powerful women in the State, and certainly the un with the Spanish Civil War Then, as a double agent inside POUM–that is, working for the OGPU in Moscoell as for Coht hand, and some sort of a mistress, they said, of her chief, the famous Andreas Nin She had worked with him from 1935 to 1937 Then, on the orders of Moscow, he was murdered and, it was rumoured, murdered by her Whether this was true or not, froht up the ladder of power, surviving setbacks, surviving wars, surviving, because she forged no allegiances and joined no factions, all the purges, until, in 1953, with the death of Beria, the bloodstained hands grasped the rung, so few from the very top, that was Head of the Operations Department of SMERSH

And, reflected Kronsteen, much of her success was due to the peculiar nature of her next most important instinct, the Sex Instinct For Rosa Klebb undoubtedly belonged to the rarest of all sexual types She was a Neuter

Kronsteen was certain of it The stories of men and, yes, of woht enjoy the act physically, but the instru ical neutrality of hers at once relieved her of so many human emotions and sentiments and desires Sexual neutrality was the essence of coldness in an individual It was a great and wonderful thing to be born with

In her, the Herd instinct would also be dead Her urge for power demanded that she should be a wolf and not a sheep She was a lone operator, but never a lonely one, because the warmth of company was unnecessary to her And, of course, teish Laziness would be her besetting vice, thought Kronsteen She would be difficult to get out of her war Her private habits would be slovenly, even dirty It would not be pleasant, thought Kronsteen, to look into the intimate side of her life, when she relaxed, out of uniforht and hisher character, which was certainly cunning and strong, to her appearance

Rosa Klebb would be in her late forties, he assu her by the date of the Spanish War She was short, about five foot four, and squat, and her dus in the drab khaki stockings, were very strong for a woht Kronsteen, what her breasts were like, but the bulge of uniform that rested on the table-top looked like a badly packed sandbag, and in general her figure, with its big pear-shaped hips, could only be likened to a 'cello

The tricoteuses of the French Revolutionback in his chair and tilting his head slightly to one side The thinning orange hair scraped back to the tight, obscene bun; the shiny yellon eyes that stared so coldly at General G through the sharp-edged squares of glass, the wedge of thickly powdered, large-pored nose; the wet trap of aas if it was operated by wires under the chin Those French wouillotine clanged down, ed in little folds under the eyes and at the corners of thepeasant's ears, the saht, hard dimpled fists, like knobkerries, that, in the case of the Russian wohtly clenched on the red velvet table-top on either side of the big bundle of bosom And their faces must have conveyed the same impression, concluded Kronsteen, of coldness and cruelty and strength as this, yes, he had to allow himself the emotive word, dreadful woman of SMERSH

'Thank you, Comrade Colonel Your review of the position is of value And now, Co to add? Please be short It is two o'clock and we all have a heavy day before us' General G's eyes, bloodshot with strain and lack of sleep, stared fixedly across the desk into the fatho forehead There had been no need to tell this man to be brief Kronsteen never had much to say, but each of his words orth speeches from the rest of the staff

Kronsteen had already hts to concentrate for so long on the woazed into the nothingness of the ceiling His voice was extremely mild, but it had the authority that commands close attention

'Comrade General, it was a Frenchman, in some respects a predecessor of yours, Fouché, who observed that it is no good killing a man unless you also destroy his reputation It will, of course, be easy to kill this arian assassin would do it, if properly instructed The second part of the operation, the destruction of this man's character, is e it is only clear to land, and in a country over whose press and radio we have influence If you ask ot there, I can only say that if the bait is ih, and its capture is open to this man alone, he will be sent to seize it from wherever he may happen to be To avoid the appearance of a trap, I would consider giving the bait a touch of eccentricity, of the unusual The English pride themselves on their eccentricity They treat the eccentric proposition as a challenge I would rely partly on this reading of their psychology to have them send this important operator after the bait'