II

Sunday Afternoon

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) … Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin left Washington today for Tel Aviv vowing peace in the Middle East providing the Russians stopped supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Syria.

Begin had been in Washington for three days of conferences with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and President Forsythe.

Sadat left earlier in the day for Cairo, claiming that a solution to the Middle East struggle was near.

The White House had no immediate comment on Begin’s statement.

The huge gray stone structure on Dzerzhinsky Square stood squat and formidable against the almost impenetrable sheets of rain hurled at the building by a cold wind. The black stone statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, father of the Soviet secret police, stood guard over the complex that was divided into two sections.

The older, smaller section, whose courtyard was separated from the wide street by a high stone fence, had before the Revolution housed the All-Russian Insurance Company. Now it was Lubyanka Prison. Lockup for political and artistic prisoners of the state.

The other, much larger, much newer section of the Dzerzhinsky complex, called simply “the Center,” housed in its nine stories the headquarters for the Soviet secret police: the KGB. This section of the building had been constructed during World War II by prisoners of war, mostly Germans, and was serviced by nine pedestrian entrances and two underground parking ramps.

Last night and this morning there had been a steady flow of traffic into the parking ramps, while the pedestrian entrances had been fairly quiet. Nearly every window in the huge complex showed light.

Colonel Yuri Zamyatin stood in the busy eighth floor corridor of the Center looking out one of the heavily screened windows down at Ditsky Mir, the children’s department store, and suddenly he remembered what he had forgotten. The vague thought had nagged at the back of his mind for more than a week now, until just this moment when he suddenly realized what it was.

The children’s Easter break from school had come and gone without the usual presents from him. He had totally forgotten about it. And the children thoughtfully had said nothing to him.

He had been preoccupied with his work over the past few months, he told himself guiltily, and somehow he was going to have to make it up to them.

At the age of fifty-four, Zamyatin’s life had been reduced to a single pair of constants. One was his children: Sandra, a rapidly maturing thirteen; Lara, still a sweet and innocent twelve; and his pride and joy, Aleksei, who was a curious eleven.

And the other constant was the Party: Father Lenin, Mother Russia, and the Komitet.

But it hadn’t always been that way.

“Yurianovich,” someone called from down the corridor, and Zamyatin turned as a husky young man, his arms loaded with thick file folders, rushed toward him.

The KGB was divided into four major divisions called Chief Directorates, and seven slightly less important divisions called, simply, Directorates.

Zamyatin and the young man heading his way were both officers in the Second Chief Directorate, the division of the Secret Service that oversaw industrial security operations, all the foreign embassies within the Soviet Union, tourists, foreign students and newsmen, foreign airlines and the few other foreign businesses allowed to operate here.

Within those subdivisions, Zamyatin had risen to the rank of KGB colonel and was in charge of the first six numbered departments in Political Security. His job was to watch over and, if possible, convert to informant status the personnel at all the foreign embassies in Moscow, except for the Chinese that had its own special department.

But at only twenty-seven, the young man who had called his name was of equal rank and had charge of the Second Chief Directorate’s Seventh Department, which handled tourists all across the Soviet Union.

This disparity in ages yet equal rank and position was a source of minor irritation to Zamyatin and an obvious source of pride to Stefan Chekalkin who nevertheless seemed to respect Zamyatin’s age and wisdom.

“I looked for you in your office,” Chekalkin said, out of breath. “When you weren’t there, I figured you might already be up here.” He glanced across the corridor toward the open doors of the rapidly filling Rally Hall, then looked back. “I was worried that I might be late.”

“Do not worry, Stefan,” Zamyatin said not unkindly. “We have a few minutes yet.” He nodded toward the file folders. “I see you have kept yourself busy this morning.”

Chekalkin beamed at what he took as a compliment. “I was here doing some homework when the call went out, so I had a head start.”

Zamyatin smiled, reached out, and lightly tapped the bundle in Chekalkin’s arms. “You know, if you stand up in there and read all of this, some of us might be buried before you are completed.”

The young man blushed. “No,—no—it isn’t that, Yurianovich,” he stammered, and he looked down at the files. “My memory is not that reliable. If I’m asked a question I want the correct answer.”

Youth, eagerness, and ambition were all deficiences in the Komitet, and yet without those qualities a man would not get very far. It was strange, Zamyatin thought, the tightrope they all walked. There was no net below, and if you fell off no one would bother to stop and pick you up.

It was a carefully designed system, he supposed, that came down to the survival of the fittest. But it had always been that way. It certainly had been during the war. It had continued that way afterward. The fittest managed to find housing one way or the other; to find enough calories each day to keep alive and healthy; to keep the balancing act between loyalty to the Party and a blind eye toward the purges going somehow, without falling off.

Chekalkin had recovered from his embarrassment and he stepped a little closer, lowering his voice to an almost comically conspiratorial level. “Have you heard yet what it is all about?”

Zamyatin shook his head. “Not a word since this morning when I came in and was told to have my department summary ready in time for a two o’clock meeting.” He looked at his watch. “My department is summarized and it’s nearly two; perhaps we should go inside.”

A few other men had stopped to chat in the corridor, and when Chekalkin was certain no one was paying them any attention, he took Zamyatin’s arm with his free hand and led him a few feet farther from the Rally Hall door.

“I heard that the entire Komitet is here this afternoon. That it has something to do with an incident at State University.”

Zamyatin laughed. “Shame on you, Stefan. Idle gossip.”

The young man reacted almost as if he had been slapped in the face. He reared back, his cheeks turning a beet red. “I … I didn’t mean…”

Suddenly Zamyatin was tired of the little charade. Either Chekalkin was an absolutely naive fool, in which case the Second Chief Directorate administrator was a raving lunatic for promoting him so fast, or the young man was a control.

It was assumed that any officer at any given moment would be subject to a control, usually in the form of another officer sent to test efficiency and often loyalty. A control operation, and there were hundreds going on at all times, might take anywhere from a few minutes of seemingly idle conversation one afternoon, to a full-scale investigation that could take years.

But whether Chekalkin was a fool or a control, Zamyatin had had enough of him this afternoon.

“It may not have occurred to you yet because of your tender years, Stefan, but the Komitet wants neither children nor automatons,” Zamyatin said evenly, careful to keep any trace of anger out of his voice. “It wants human beings. Men who are willing and able to use their brains in rational thought.”

Without waiting for Chekalkin to respond, Zamyatin turned and stalked across the corridor into the nearly full Rally Hall.

Two guards wearing the armbands of Officers of the Proceedings checked his badge and number against a master list, then let him through. He found a place half a dozen rows back from the front.

The Rally Hall was just as its name implied; it was normally used to conduct May Day, Peace Day, October Revolution Day, and other special occasion rallies that were designed to pump up spirit and enthusiasm for the current five year plan.

It was a large room, laid out like a lecture hall with three sections of seats arranged in tiers that fanned upward and outward from a small stage in the front.

Zamyatin was normally a mild-mannered, very soft-spoken man, unaccustomed to such outbursts as he had directed at young Chekalkin, and it took him several moments to calm down before he became aware of the extraordinary nature of this meeting.

On the stage were seated the administrators of all four Chief Directorates, the seven subdirectorates as well as the operations chief for the entire KGB.

The audience of more than one hundred persons was composed of all the department heads, such as Zamyatin and Chekalkin, and a few section subchiefs.

He had never attended or even heard of such a gathering. Usually departments within the KGB were nearly autonomous. The system was set up that way to keep need-to-know lists at an absolute minimum. In fact, it was treason to ask information from any department other than your own without special permission from a Directorate chief or higher.

Now the entire officer corps of the Komitet was assembled in one place at one time, presumably for a single purpose.

Extraordinary.

The operations chief, General Mikail Barynin, a heavyset man with dark hair, dark brooding eyes under thick bushy eyebrows reminiscent of Brezhnev’s came to the podium as the guards at the back of the hall closed and locked the doors. Half a dozen technicians who had been sweeping the walls of the Rally Hall with electronic detection devices nodded toward their officer who in turn nodded toward General Barynin. A moment later the lights dimmed, and the picture of an elderly man was flashed on the white plaster wall at the back of the narrow stage.

“Leonid Illyich Sakharov, Doctor of Physics, Professor of Laser Science, Moscow State University.” Barynin’s thick, rich Leningrad voice boomed through the hall without amplification.

Zamyatin sat forward in his seat. Sakharov. It was a familiar name and a familiar face. But he could not place the man.

“Professor Doctor Sakharov is considered to be the leading laser technologist in the world. Through his efforts have come laser advances in medicine, industry, and a dozen other areas including military application. On Professor Doctor Sakharov’s shoulders rests the Soviet Union’s world leadership in this science.”

Sakharov’s photograph was replaced on the wall with the projection of a map of Moscow. Moscow State University was outlined in red.

Without looking over his shoulder at the map, General Barynin continued. “At approximately 2300 hours last night, Professor Doctor Sakharov was taken from his office at Moscow State University. Two men identifying themselves as Fifth Chief Directorate officers from the Intelligentsia Direction were admitted to the university grounds by the gate officer at 2250 hours. The men were driving a Zil limousine, license unknown.”

The map projected on the wall disappeared, and a moment later it was replaced with what appeared to be composite drawings of two men. Both of them heavyset and dark, but for the most part nondescript. They could have been any one of a hundred thousand Moscow residents.

“The two officers on duty at the physics wing of the university reported in their nightly logs that an officer with the proper Fifth Chief Directorate codes notified them at 2205 hours to expect two officers who would arrive to escort Professor Doctor Sakharov to the airport.

“The duty guards, whose descriptions provided the renderings behind me, confirmed that these men did indeed arrive at the physics wing at 2255 hours. At 2301 hours the two men left the building escorting Professor Doctor Sakharov. One of the two men removed from the building what is believed to be Professor Doctor Sakharov’s briefcase.”

The projected image of the two men flashed off the screen and the Rally Hall’s lights came on. No one in the large room made a sound. All eyes were glued on the general.

Fully half the people in this room, Zamyatin mused, had never laid eyes on the famed chief of operations who maintained his office in the new building outside the city. The other half of this group, including Zamyatin himself, were almost awestruck by the man’s presence. If Leonid Brezhnev himself had given this briefing, the audience would not have been more impressed.

Never had one man commanded so much respect since Joesph Stalin. And it was even said that Barynin had the power to turn Stalin down when the Soviet leader had ordered him to become the Party Secretary.

The man had preferred his job riding roughshod over the secret police, taking his place in the history books along with Dzerzhinsky himself, Menzhinsky, head of the old OGPU, Yagoda, who ran the NKVD until 1936, the infamous “bloody dwarf” Yezhov who was shot next door in the basement, and others. Stalin had deferred to his wishes, and Barynin, then only a colonel, was promoted to general, and appointed head of KGB operations, directly answerable to Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, the Politburo politican who was named KGB chairman.

No one moved, no one coughed, no one talked in the large hall, and after a brief pause, Barynin continued.

“The Fifth Chief Directorate administrator assures me personally that his department has no knowledge of the events of last night. He assures me personally that his directorate in fact did not field such an operation involving Doctor Professor Sakharov.”

The silence in the hall this time was a stunned quietness, and Zamyatin noted that the Fifth’s administrator, General Losev, a man about whom he knew very little, sat on the stage with the other directorate administrators behind Barynin, immobile, his features rigid and chalk white.

What Barynin had said, in effect, was that the Fifth Chief Directorate was not above suspicion in this matter despite its administrator’s assurances to the contrary.

“The facts are these comrades,” Barynin’s voice boomed through the Rally Hall. “Professor Doctor Sakharov is missing from his office at Moscow State University. He has not been seen at his apartment since he left for the university at 1100 hours Saturday. His whereabouts at this moment are unknown.

“Additionally, a device, portable in nature, one that Professor Doctor Sakharov developed himself, is missing from the university. This device, I am told, could easily be disassembled to fit into, say, a large briefcase and is capable of projecting a highly deadly beam of laser light. A beam that could easily penetrate a stone wall, several inches of lead shielding, and, most certainly, a man.”

Again Barynin paused, and again the silence in the Rally Hall was absolute, all eyes rigidly fixed on the man before them.

“As of this moment,” the general continued finally, “you may all consider yourselves under a full Center alert. This operation will be coded CLEAN SWEEP, and for its duration normal reporting chains of command will be suspended.

“Twice daily progress reports will be forwarded directly from each department chief to my office. I will have a staff set up to receive, collate, and respond.

“The primary objectives of CLEAN SWEEP are to find and recover Professor Doctor Sakharov and the laser device. Secondary objectives include the arrest of the planners of the operation, its agents, its methods, and, most importantly, its motives.

“I have imposed an absolute time limit on this operation of 1100 hours. Thursday, that is, four days from now, by which time all objectives will be met.”

Zamyatin’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement. Such a specific moment in time; 1100 hours on Thursday. It had to be significant in itself. But what did it mean? He tried to think.

“There will be no restrictions of concept on this operation, comrades. Each department chief will assume for the duration of the operation, unless directed otherwise, that someone in his area of expertise, some person or organization, some group internal or external to the Soviet Union has Professor Doctor Sakharov and the laser device.

“Each department chief will make use of any and all resources within or without the Center to achieve the operation objectives.

“Absolute interdirectorate and interdepartmental autonomy will be maintained at all times unless specific operational objectives are cleared through my office.

“Funding is absolute for the duration. However, all requisitions will be cleared through my staff.

“All control operations are suspended for the duration unless cleared by my staff for a specific operational objective.”

The general paused again, this time to stare out at his audience, and the effect was chilling. Zamyatin was certain the man’s gaze was directed toward him and him alone. His eyes seemed to bore deeply, impressing the need for immediate action and absolute loyalty.

After what seemed like minutes but was actually only a few seconds, Barynin finished his briefing with the standard Center expression: “Comrades, we have work to do,” and he marched off the stage through a back door, followed stiffly by the directorate administrators. The audience rose and began shuffling out of the Rally Hall, no one speaking a word or even daring to look at anyone else.

When Zamyatin was away from the press of the crowd he hurried down to Second Chief Directorate territory on the fourth floor, which looked toward Ditsky Mir and beyond it the huge Bolshoi Theater.

As head of the directorate’s Political Security Service, Zamyatin was in charge of six numbered departments, each with the majority of its staff housed near the embassy it served.

At the Dzerzhinsky Square headquarters, Zamyatin had his own small office that opened directly into a very large room filled with row after row of desks, manned mostly by data specialists and collators, officers whose specialty it was to collate data received from field operations into recognizable patterns.

He paused at his office door and looked out across the rows of desks, empty now on this Sunday afternoon.

Each department within the Political Security Service had a specific job. The First Department was charged with operations against the United States Embassy as well as the embassies of Latin American countries.

The Second Department worked on the foreign diplomats from nations of the British Commonwealth; the Third included the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia; the Fourth, all other western European nations; the Fifth, non-European developed nations; and the Sixth, non-European underdeveloped nations.

It was a huge operation, Zamyatin mused, one in which he was personally responsible for several thousand employees scattered all over Moscow.

The First Department alone was manned by a chief, two deputies, fifty staff officers, recruiters, plus scores of agent runners, and more than three hundred surveillance officers on permanent loan from the Surveillance Directorate. Its headquarters was located a few blocks away from the American embassy in a five-story building that had once been used as a warehouse.

The First Department in turn was divided into five sections, each with such specific tasks as the recruitment of U.S. Embassy personnel, the neutralization of any intelligence operations the Americans might mount from the embassy itself, and around the clock surveillance of any and all Soviet citizens who had any contact whatsoever with American embassy personnel.

It was a vast operation that would for the next four days have to be welded into a single unit.

Zamyatin went into his office and sat down behind his desk as he began to organize his thoughts. He would begin by calling in each department chief to outline objectives.

Something else intruded on his mind as well, however, as it had in the Rally Hall. Thursday, 1100 hours. Why the specific time?

General Barynin had run his career like he ran the KGB, on several levels at once. Official policy stated that an operation was never mounted with only one objective in mind when two objectives were possible; an operation was never mounted with two objectives in mind when a third was possible; and so on.

The objective in CLEAN SWEEP was to come up with the person or persons who planned and executed the kidnaping, their method of operation, and their motives, as well as Sakharov and the laser.

But 1100 hours Thursday? Was the general merely telling them that they had roughly ninety-six hours to accomplish their objective? Or was he telling them something else?

Zamyatin’s gaze wandered from the Political Service Personnel Directory opened in front of him, to the framed photograph of his children atop the file cabinet by the door. The photograph had been taken by a friend two summers ago when he and the children had gone on a long-awaited vacation to the Caspian. The picture showed the children by the sea, building dachas in the sand. It had been a happy time. A truly happy time of togetherness.

Suddenly the date clicked, but he was certain of it only for a moment. Then his mind did not want to accept the possibilities it raised.

Thursday 1100 hours. It was the day and time the president of the United States was due to arrive at Vnukovo Official Airport. He had promised to take the children there to see it.

The president of the United States? Sakharov and a portable, deadly laser device? It was insane. Such thoughts were totally outside the realm of reality.

Zamyatin was suddenly very cold. He turned in his chair so that he could look out his window past Ditsky Mir toward the Bolshoi Theater ablaze in lights.

Were the date and time significant, or merely coincidental?

Zamyatin let his mind wander down that dark corridor. Assuming the date was significant, the laser device would have been the primary objective. Sakharov had been taken either as a decoy, as a smoke screen, or because his knowledge was needed to operate the device.

Given the device was to be used to assassinate the president, where would it occur? At the airport? During the drive through Moscow to the Kremlin?

General Barynin had said that the laser device could penetrate several inches of lead shielding. An armored limousine would offer no protection. The attack could come at any moment, from any apartment building, any rooftop. Silent. A pinpoint flash that only the victim might see if he were looking that way.

Ingenious.

But, and it was a big word, Zamyatin’s role in CLEAN SWEEP was bounded by the assumption that someone within his area of expertise had Sakharov and the laser. That meant someone from one of the foreign embassies located in Moscow was planning to assassinate the American president.

Which included, Zamyatin thought with a sick feeling, the American embassy.

Could such a monstrous thing be possible, he asked himself, hardly daring to think such a thing let alone examine it in detail.

Could the Americans be planning to assassinate their own president? Could they use such an action to precipitate military retaliation on the Soviet Union? Was such a thing possible?

He turned back to his desk, and began telephoning his department chiefs one by one down the list, as a name kept nagging at the back of his mind.

John F. Kennedy.