And he would destroy the man, Kazin vowed. Malik had stolen from him once. Robbed him of something more precious than he had ever known, before or since. The bastard would not steal anything from him again: certainly not the First Chief Directorate, the control of which had been Kazin’s ambition from the moment of joining the Soviet intelligence service in the distant days of Stalin’s reign, before it was even known as the KGB.

Alone in his expansive office in the Chief Directorate headquarters overlooking Moscow’s peripheral road, Kazin actually sniggered to himself, the earlier burning, impotent fury diminishing. Malik had been forever and permanently safe from the longed-for vengeance within the KGB’s Second Chief Directorate, too independently powerful. It was the very fact of the man being untouchable that led Kazin to target the son, determined to hurt by proxy if that were the only way. But it wasn’t now: not any longer. Now he would be able to destroy them both, father and son.

He would have to be careful, though. At the moment Kazin objectively accepted his was the weaker position, someone suspect because of initial and admittedly mistaken opposition to Gorbachov, a stance he’d taken because he had been sure the Kremlin establishment would neuter the man. He’d had no alternative anyway: he was provably on record as declaring for Brezhnev and then Andropov. And by so doing branding himself an Old Order traditionalist.

So it was essential to get his survival priorities right. Which meant first proving himself to Gorbachov and his new broom acolytes, with some spectacular intelligence coup. Kazin smiled to himself again. The American operation could not have matured at a more fortuitous time.