Relieved, Olga responded. “Very friendly. They were dressed so …” She gestured. “Very rich. I even met man from your capital city, Washington, DC.”
“You did?”
“Yes. Very nice. He gave me card.”
Robert’s heart skipped a beat. “Do you still have it?”
“No. I threw it away.” She looked around. “Is better not keep things like that.”
Damn!
And then she added, “I remember his name. Parker, like your American pen. Kevin Parker. Very important in politics. He tells senators how vote.”
Robert was taken aback. “Is that what he told you?”
“Yes. He takes them on trips and gives gifts, and then they vote for things his clients need. That is the way democracy works in America.”
A lobbyist. Robert let Olga talk for the next fifteen minutes, but he got no further useful information about the other passengers.
Robert telephoned General Milliard from his hotel room.
“I found the Russian witness. Her name is Olga Romanchanko. She works in the main library in Kiev.”
“I’ll have a Russian official speak to her.”
FLASH MESSAGE
TOP SECRET ULTRA
NSA TO DEPUTY DIRECTOR GRU
EYES ONLY
COPY ONE OF (ONE) COPIES
SUBJECT: OPERATION DOOMSDAY
8. OLGA ROMANCHANKO – KIEV
END OF MESSAGE
That afternoon Robert was on an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu – 154 jet to Paris. When he arrived three hours and twenty-five minutes later, he transferred to an Air France flight to Washington, DC.
At two a.m. Olga Romanchanko heard the squeal of brakes as a car pulled up in front of the apartment building where she lived, on Vertryk Street. The walls of the apartment were so thin that she could hear voices outside on the street. She got out of bed and looked out of the window. Two men in civilian clothes were getting out of a black Chaika, the model used by government officials. They were approaching the entrance to her apartment building. The sight of them sent a shiver through her. Over the years, some of her neighbours had disappeared, never to be seen again. Some of them had been sent to the Gulag in Siberia. Olga wondered who the secret police were after this time, and even as she was thinking it, there was a knock on her door, startling her. What do they want with me? she wondered. It must be some mistake.
When she opened the door, the two men were standing there.
“Comrade Olga Romanchanko?”
“Yes.”
“Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye.”
The dreaded GRU.
They pushed their way past her into the room.
“What … what is it you want?”
“We will ask the questions. I am Sergeant Yuri Gromkov. This is Sergeant Vladimir Zemsky.”
She felt a sudden sense of terror. “What’s … what’s wrong? What have I done?”
Zemsky pounced on it. “Oh, so you know you have done something wrong!”
“No, of course not,” Olga said, flustered. “I do not know why you are here.”
“Sit down,” Gromkov shouted. Olga sat.
“You have just returned from a trip to Switzerland, nyet?”
“Y … yes,” she stuttered, “but it … it was … I got permission from …”
“Espionage is not legal, Olga Romanchanko.”
“Espionage?” She was horrified. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
The larger man was staring at her body, and Olga suddenly realized she was wearing only a thin nightgown.
“Let’s go. You are coming with us.”
“But there is some terrible mistake. I’m a librarian. Ask anybody here who …”
He pulled her to her feet. “Come.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To headquarters. They want to question you.”
They allowed her to put on a coat over her nightgown. She was shoved down the stairs and into the Chaika. Olga thought of all the people who had ridden in cars like this before and had never returned, and she was numb with fear.
The larger man, Gromkov, was driving. Olga was seated in the back with Zemsky. He somehow seemed less frightening to her, but she was petrified by who they were and what was going to happen to her.
“Please believe me,” Olga said earnestly. “I would never betray my …”
“Shut up,” Gromkov barked.
Vladimir Zemsky said, “Look, there’s no reason to be rough with her. As a matter of fact, I believe her.”
Olga felt her heart leap with hope.
“Times have changed,” Comrade Zemsky went on. “Comrade Gorbachev doesn’t like us to go around bothering innocent people. Those days are past.”
“Who said she’s innocent?” Gromkov growled. “Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. They’ll find out soon enough at headquarters.”
Olga sat there listening to the two men discussing her as though she were not there.
Zemsky said, “Come now, Yuri, you know that at headquarters she will confess, whether she’s guilty or not. I don’t like this.”
“That’s too bad. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Yes, there is.”
“What?”
The man next to Olga was silent for a moment. “Listen,” he said. “Why don’t we just let her go? We could tell them she was not at home. We’ll put them off for a day or two, and they will forget all about her because they have so many people to question.”
Olga tried to say something, but her throat was too dry. She desperately wanted the man beside her to win the argument.
