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Kronsteen paused He lowered his head so that he was looking just over General G's shoulder

'I shall proceed to devise such a trap,' he said indifferently 'For the present, I can only say that if the bait is successful in attracting its prey, we are then likely to require an assassin with a perfect coe'

Kronsteen's eyes htfully, as if this was the kernel of the problem, he added: 'We shall also require a reliable and extreht

The Beautiful Lure

Sitting by theof her one roo, at the first pink of the sunset reflected in the s across the street, at the distant onion spire of a church that flaed horizon of Moscow roofs, Corporal of State Security Tatiana Roht that she was happier than she had ever been before

Her happiness was not ro to do with the rapturous start to a love affair–those days and weeks before the first tiny tear-clouds appear on the horizon It was the quiet, settled happiness of security, of being able to look forith confidence to the future, heightened by the is, a word of praise she had had that afternoon fro on the electric stove, her favourite prelude to Boris Goudonov being played by the Moscow State Orchestra on the radio, and, over all, the beauty of the fact that the long winter and short spring were past and it was June

The roo on the Sadovaya-Chernogriazskay Ulitza that is the women's barracks of the State Security Departments Built by prison labour, and finished in 1939, the fine eight-storey building contains two thousand roo but square boxes with a telephone, hot and cold water, a single electric light and a share of the central bathroo of two- and three-roo wo was strictly by rank, and Corporal Roeant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major and Lieutenant-Colonel before she would reach the paradise of the eighth and Colonels' floor

But heaven knew she was content enough with her present lot A salary of 1200 roubles a month (thirty per cent more than she could have earned in any other Ministry), a room to herself; cheap food and clothes fro; a monthly allocation of at least two Ministry tickets to the Ballet or the Opera; a full teeks' paid holiday a year And, above all, a steady job with good prospects in Moscow–not in one of those dreary provincial tohere nothing happened month after month, and where the arrival of a new fil to keep one out of bed in the evening

Of course, you had to pay for being in the MGB The uniform put you apart from the world People were afraid, which didn't suit the nature of irls, and you were confined to the society of other MGB girls and men, one of whom, when the time came, you would have to marry in order to stay with the Ministry And they worked like the devil–eight to six, five and a half days a week, and only forty ood lunch, a real meal, and you could do with little supper and save up for the sable coat that would one day take the place of the orn Siberian fox

At the thought of her supper, Corporal Romanova left her chair by theand went to examine the pot of thick soup, with a few shreds of meat and some powdered mushroom, that was to be her supper It was nearly done and smelled delicious She turned off the electricity and let the pot simmer while she washed and tidied, as, years before, she had been taught to do before meals

While she dried her hands, she exalass over the washstand

One of her early boy-friends had said she looked like the young Greta Garbo What nonsense! And yet tonight she did look rather well Fine dark brown silken hair brushed straight back fro heavily down alhtly up at the ends (Garbo had once done her hair like that and Corporal Roood, soft pale skin with an ivory sheen at the cheek-bones; wide apart, level eyes of the deepest blue under straight natural brows (she closed one eye after the other Yes, her lashes were certainly long enough!) a straight, rather imperious nose–and then the mouth What about the mouth? Was it too broad? It must look terribly hen she smiled She smiled at herself in the mirror Yes, it ide; but then so had Garbo's been At least the lips were full and finely etched There was the hint of a smile at the corners No one could say it was a cold ? Was her chin a shade too sharp? She swung her head sideways to see it in profile The heavy curtain of hair swung forward and across her right eye so that she had to brush it back Well, the chin was pointed, but at least it wasn't sharp She faced the , heavy hair Greta Garbo! She was all right, or so irls ere always co to her for advice about their faces But a fillass and went to eat her supper

In fact Corporal Tatiana Roirl indeed Apart from her face, the tall, firm body moved particularly well She had been a year in the ballet school in Leningrad and had abandoned dancing as a career only when she grew an inch over the prescribed liht her to hold herself well and to ell And she looked wonderfully healthy, thanks to her passion for figure-skating, which she practised all through the year at the Dynamo ice-stadium and which had already earned her a place on the first Dynamo women's team Her arms and breasts were faultless A purist would have disapproved of her behind Its muscles were so hardened with exercise that it had lost the smooth doard feminine sweep, and now, round at the back and flat and hard at the sides, it jutted like a man's

Corporal Rolish translation section of the MGB Central Index Everyone agreed that it would not be long before one of the senior officers came across her and peremptorily hauled her out of her modest section to make her his mistress, or if absolutely necessary, his wife