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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 women, were too
circumstantial to be doubted. She might enjoy the act physically, but the
instrument was of no importance. For her, sex was nothing more than an itch.
And this psychological and physiological 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
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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, temperamentally, she would be a phlegmatic-imperturbable, tolerant of
pain, sluggish. Laziness would be her besetting vice, thought Kronsteen. She
would be difficult to get out of her warm, hoggish bed in the morning. 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 uniform. Kronsteen's pouting lips curled away from the thought
and his mind hastened on, skipping her character, which was certainly cunning
and strong, to her appearance.
Rosa Klebb would be in her late forties, he assumed, placing her by the date
of the Spanish War. She was short, about five foot four, and squat, and her
dumpy arms and short neck, and the calves of the thick legs in the drab khaki
stockings, were very strong for a woman. The devil knows, thought
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 Revolution must have had faces like hers,
decided Kronsteen, sitting back in his chair and tilting his head slightly to
one side. The thinning orange hair scraped back to the tight, obscene bun; the
shiny yellow-brown 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 a mouth, that went on opening and shutting as if it was
operated by wires under the chin. Those French women, as they sat and knitted
and chatted while the guillotine clanged down, must have had the same pale,
thick chicken's skin that scragged in little folds under the eyes and at the
corners of the mouth and below the jaws, the same big peasant's ears, the same
tight, hard dimpled fists, like knobkerries, that, in the case of the Russian
woman, now lay tightly 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,
Comrade Kronsteen, have you anything 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 fathomless brown pools below the bulging forehead.
There had been no need to tell this man to be brief.
Kronsteen never had much to say, but each of his words was worth speeches from
the rest of the staff.
Kronsteen had already made up his mind, or he would not have allowed his
thoughts to concentrate for so long on the woman.
He slowly tilted back his head and gazed 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
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his reputation. It will, of course, be easy to kill this man Bond. Any paid
Bulgarian assassin would do it, if properly instructed. The second part of the
operation, the destruction of this man's character, is more important and more
difficult. At this stage it is only clear to me that the deed must be done
away from England, and in a country over whose press and radio we have
influence. If you ask me how the man is to be got there, I can only say that
if the bait is important enough, 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.'
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 command of the
English language.'
Kronsteen's eyes moved to the red velvet table-top in front of him.
Thoughtfully, as if this was the kernel of the problem, he added: `We shall
also require a reliable and extremely beautiful girl.'
Chapter Eight
The Beautiful Lure
Sitting by the window of her one room and looking out at the serene June
evening, at the first pink of the sunset reflected in the windows across the
street, at the distant onion spire of a church that flamed like a torch above
the ragged horizon of Moscow roofs, Corporal of State Security Tatiana
Romanova thought that she was happier than she had ever been before.
Her happiness was not romantic. It had nothing 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 forward with confidence to the future, heightened by the immediate
things, a word of praise she had had that afternoon from Professor Denikin,
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