The Sum of All Fears

“Guten Abend, Frau Fromm,” the man said.

“Peter Wiegler, from the Berliner Tageblatt. I wonder if I might speak with you briefly.”

“Aber ...” He gestured at the rain he was standing in. She remembered that she was civilized after all, even to a journalist.

“Yes, of course, please come in.”

“Thank you.” He came in out of the rain and removed his coat, which she hung on a peg. He was a captain in the KGB’s First Chief (Foreign) Directorate, a promising young officer of thirty years, handsome, gifted in languages, the holder of a master’s degree in psychology, and another in engineering. He already had Traudl Fromm figured out. The new Audi parked outside was comfortable but not luxurious, her clothing—also new—very presentable but not overpowering. She was proud and moderately greedy, but also parsimonious. Curious, but guarded. She was hiding something, also smart enough to know that turning him away would generate more suspicion than whatever explanation she might have. He took his seat on an overstuffed chair and waited for the next move. She didn’t offer coffee. She hoped the encounter would be a short one. He wondered if this third person on his list of ten names might be something worth reporting to Moscow Center.

“Your husband is associated with the Greifswald-Nord Nuclear Power Station?”

“He was. As you know, it is being closed down.”

“Quite so. I would like to know what you and he think of that. Is Dr. Fromm at home?”

“No, he is not,” she answered uncomfortably. “Wiegler” didn’t react visibly.

“Really? May I ask where he is?”

“He is away on business.”

“Perhaps I might come back in a few days, then?”

“Perhaps. You might call ahead?” It was the way she said it that the KGB officer noticed. She was hiding something, and the Captain knew that it had to be something—

There was another knock at the door. Traudl Fromm went to answer it.

“Guten Abend, Frau Fromm,” a voice said. “We bring a message from Manfred.”

The Captain heard the voice, and something inside his head went on alert. He told himself not to react. This was Germany, and everything was in Ordnung. Besides, he might learn something....

“I, ah, have a guest at the moment,” Traudl answered.

The next statement was delivered in a whisper. The Captain heard approaching steps, and took his time before turning to look. It was a fatal error.

The face he saw might as easily have come from one of the endless World War II movies that he’d grown up on, just that it lacked the black-and-silver-trimmed uniform of an SS officer. It was a stern, middle-aged face with light blue eyes entirely devoid of emotion. A professional face that measured his as quickly as he—

It was time to—

“Hello. I was just about to leave.”

“Who is he?” Traudl didn’t get a chance to answer.

“I’m a reporter with—” It was too late. A pistol appeared from nowhere. “Was gibt’s hier?” he demanded.

“Where is your car?” the man behind the gun asked.

“I parked it down the street. I—”

“All those spaces right in front? Reporters are lazy. Who are you?”

“I’m a reporter with the—”

“I think not.”

“This one, too,” the one in back said. The Captain remembered the face from somewhere.... He told himself not to panic. That, too, was a mistake.

“Listen closely. You will be going on a short trip. If you cooperate, you will be returned here within three hours. If you do not cooperate, things will go badly for you. Verstehen Sie?”

They had to be intelligence officers, the Captain thought, making a correct guess. And they had to be German, and that meant that they would play by the rules, he told himself, making the last mistake of what had been a promising career.

The courier arrived from Cyprus right on schedule, handing off his package to another man at one of five pre-selected transfer points, all of which had been under surveillance for twelve hours. The second man walked two blocks and started up his Yamaha motorcycle, tearing off into the countryside just as fast as he could in an area where motorcyclists were all certifiably mad. Two hours after that, he delivered the package, certain that he had not been followed, and kept going another thirty minutes before circling back to his point of origin.

Günther Bock took the package and was annoyed to see that it was to all appearances a movie cassette—Chariots of Fire—rather than the hollowed-out book he’d requested. Perhaps Erwin was delivering a message along with the cassette. Bock inserted it in a player and switched it on, catching the first few minutes of the feature movie, which was subtitled in French. Soon, he realized that Keitel’s message was on what intelligence professionals really did. He fast-forwarded through ninety minutes of the film before the picture changed.

What?

“Who are you?” an off-camera voice asked harshly.

“I am Peter Wiegler, I am a reporter with—” The rest was a scream. The equipment used was crude, just an electrical cord ripped off a lamp or appliance, the insulation trimmed off the free end to expose a few centimeters of copper. Few understood just how effective crude instruments could be, especially if the user possessed some degree of sophistication. The man who called himself Peter Wiegler screamed as though his throat would split from the effort. He’d already bitten through his lower lip in previous efforts to keep silent. The only good thing about using electricity was that it wasn’t especially bloody, just noisy.

“You must understand that you are being foolish. Your courage is impressive, but wasted here. Courage only has use when there is hope of rescue. We’ve already searched your car. We have your passports. We know that you are not German. So, what are you? Pole, Russian, what?”

The young man opened his eyes and took a long breath before speaking. “I am an investigative reporter with the Berliner Tageblatt. ” They hit him again with the electric cord, and this time he passed out. Bock watched a man’s back approach the victim and check his eyes and pulse. The torturer appeared to be wearing a chemical-warfare-protective suit of rubberized fabric, but without the hood and gloves. It must have been awfully hot, Bock thought.

“Obviously a trained intelligence officer. Probably Russian. Not circumcised, and his dental work is stainless steel, not especially well done. That means an East Bloc service, of course. Too bad, this lad is quite brave.” The voice was admirably clinical, Bock thought.

“What drugs do we have?” another voice asked.

“A rather good tranquilizer. Now?”

“Now. Not too much.”

“Very well.” The man went off-camera, then returned with a syringe. He grasped the victim’s upper arm, then injected the drug into a vein inside the elbow. It took three minutes before the KGB man regained consciousness, just enough for the rush of drugs to assault his higher brain functions.

“Sorry we had to do that to you. You have passed the test,” the voice said, this time in Russian.

“What test—” The answer was in Russian, just two words before his brain took hold and stopped him. “Why did you ask me in Russian?”

“Because that was what we wished to know. Good night.”

The victim’s eyes went wide as a small-caliber pistol appeared, was placed against his chest, and fired. The camera withdrew a bit to show more of the room. A plastic sheet—actually three of them—covered the floor to catch blood and other droppings under the metal chair. The bullet wound was speckled with black powder marks and bulged outward from the intrusion of gun-gasses below the skin. There wasn’t much bleeding. Heart wounds never produced much. In a few more seconds the body stopped quivering.

“We could have taken more time to ascertain additional information, but we have what we need, as I will explain later.” It was Keitel’s voice, off-camera.

“Now, Traudl ...”

They brought her in front of the camera, hands bound in front of her, her mouth gagged with the same bandaging tape, her eyes wide in terror, naked. She was trying to say something around the gag, but no one there had been interested. The tape was a day and a half old, of course. Günther could tell that from the TV that was playing in the corner, tuned to an evening news broadcast. The entire performance was a professional tour de force designed to meet his requirements.

Bock could almost hear the man thinking, Now, how do we do this? Günther momentarily regretted the instructions he’d given Keitel. But the evidence had to be positive. Magicians and other experts in illusion regularly consulted with intelligence agencies—but some things could not be faked, and he had to be sure that he could trust Keitel to do terrible and dangerous things. It was an objective necessity that this be graphic.

Another man looped a rope over a ceiling beam and hauled her hands up, then the first pressed his pistol into her armpit and fired a single shot. At least he wasn’t a sadist, Bock thought. Such people were not reliable. It was quite sad to watch in any case. The bullet had punctured her heart, but she was too excited to die quickly, struggling for more than half a minute, eyes still wide, fighting for breath, still trying to speak, probably begging for help, asking why.... After she went limp, one checked the pulse at her neck, then lowered her slowly to the floor. They’d been as gentle about it as they could have been under the circumstances. The shooter spoke without facing the camera.

“I hope you are satisfied. I did not enjoy this.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” Bock said to the television set.

The Russian was taken off the chair and laid beside Traudl Fromm. While the bodies were dismembered, Keitel’s voice spoke. It was a useful diversion, as the visual scene simply got more horrible. Bock was not squeamish about many things, but it troubled his psyche when human bodies were abused after death. Necessary or not, it seemed gratuitous to him.

“The Russian is undoubtedly an intelligence officer, as you have seen. His automobile was a rental from Berlin, and is being driven tomorrow to Magdeburg, where it will be turned in. It was parked down the street, normal procedure for a professional, of course, but a giveaway in the event of capture. In the car we found a list of names, all of them in the DDR nuclear-power industry. It would seem that our Russian comrades have suddenly become interested in Honecker’s bomb project. A pity we didn’t have another few years to follow up on that, no? I regret the complication involved, but it took us several days to set up arrangements for disposing of the bodies, and we had no idea Frau Fromm had her ‘guest’ when we knocked on the door. At that point, of course, it was too late. Besides, with the rain we had ideal conditions for the kidnapping.” Two men were working on each body. All wore the protective suits, and now they had their hoods and masks on, doubtless to protect them from the smell as much as to protect their identity. As in a slaughterhouse, sawdust was applied in buckets full to soak up the copious amounts of blood being spilled. Bock knew from experience just how messy murders could be. They worked quickly as Keitel’s voice-over went on, using powered industrial cutting tools. Arms and legs had been removed from the torsos, and then the heads were removed and held up to the camera. No one could fake this. Keitel’s men had truly murdered two human beings. The dismemberment in front of a playing television made that absolutely certain, and would doubtless also make disposal easier. The pieces were assembled neatly for wrapping in plastic. One of the men started brushing the blood-soaked sawdust into a pile for yet another plastic bag.

“The body parts will be burned at two widely separated locations. This will be accomplished long before you get the tape. That ends our message. We await further instructions.” And the tape returned to the dramatization of the 1920 Olympics—or was it 1924? Bock wondered. Not that it mattered, of course.

“Yes, Colonel?”

“One of my officers has failed to check in.” The Colonel was from Directorate T, the technical branch of the First Chief Directorate. The holder of a doctor’s degree in engineering, his personal specialty was missile systems. He had worked in America and France, ferreting out the secrets of various military weapons before being promoted to his current job.

“Details?”

“Captain Yevgeniy Stepanovich Feodorov, age thirty, married, one child, a fine young officer on the Major’s List. He was one of the three I sent into Germany at your direction to check out their nuclear facilities. He’s one of my best.”

“How long?” Golovko asked.

“Six days. He flew into Berlin via Paris last week. He had German papers, good ones from downstairs, and a list of ten names to investigate. His instructions were to maintain a low profile unless he discovered something important, in which case he was to make contact with Station Berlin—what’s left of it, I mean. We scheduled a periodic check-in, of course. He didn’t make it, and after twenty-four hours, I got the alert.”

“Could it be that he’s just careless?”

“Not this boy,” the Colonel said flatly. “Does the name mean anything to you?”

“Feodorov ... wasn’t his father ... ?”

“Stefan Yurievich, yes. Yevgeniy is his youngest son.”

“Good God, Stefan taught me, ” Golovko said. “Possibility of...?”

“Defection?” The Colonel shook his head angrily. “Not a chance. His wife is in the chorus with the opera. No—they met in university and married young over the objections of both sets of parents. It’s a love match like we all wish we had. She’s a stunningly beautiful girl, voice like an angel. Only a zhopnik would walk away from her. Then there’s the child. He is by all reports a good father.” Golovko saw where this was leading.

“Arrested, then?”

“I haven’t heard a whisper. Perhaps you might arrange to have that checked. I fear the worst.” The Colonel frowned and stared down at the rug. He didn’t want to be the one who broke the news to Natalia Feodorova.

“Hard to believe,” Golovko said.

“Sergey Nikolay’ch, if your suspicions are correct, then this program we were tasked to investigate is a matter of grave importance to them, is it not? We may have confirmed something in the most expensive way possible.”

General Lieutenant Sergey Nikolayevich Golovko was silent for several seconds. It’s not supposed to be like this, he told himself. The intelligence business is supposed to be civilized. Killing each other’s officers is a thing of the distant past. We don’t do that sort of thing anymore, haven’t done it in years ... decades....

“None of the alternatives are credible, are they?”

The Colonel shook his head. “No. But the most credible is that our man stumbled into something both real and extremely sensitive. Sensitive enough to kill for. A secret nuclear-weapons program is that sensitive, is it not?”

“Arguably, yes.” The Colonel was showing the sort of loyalty to his people that KGB expected, Golovko noted. He was also thinking over the alternatives and presenting his best estimate of the situation.

“Have you sent your technical people to Sarova yet?”

“Day after tomorrow. My best man was sick, just got out of the hospital—broke his leg in a fall down some stairs.”

“Have him carried there if necessary. I want a worst-case estimate of plutonium production at the DDR power stations. Send another man to Kyshtym to back-check the people at Sarova. Pull in the other people you sent to Germany. We’ll restart the investigation more carefully. Two-man teams, and the backup man is to be armed ... that is dangerous,” Golovko said on reflection.

“General, it takes a lot of time and money to train my field people. I will need two years to replace Feodorov, two whole years. You can’t just pull an officer out of another branch and drop him into this line of work. These people must understand what they are looking for. Assets like that should be protected.”

“You are correct. I will clear it with the Chairman and send experienced officers ... maybe some people from the Academy ... credential them like German police officials?”

“I like that, Sergey Nikolay’ch.”

“Good man, Pavel Ivan’ch. And on Feodorov?”

“Maybe he’ll turn up. Thirty days before he’s declared missing, then I’ll have to see his wife. Very well, I’ll pull my people in and start planning the next phase of the operation. When will I have a list of the escort officers?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Very well, General, thank you for your time.”

Golovko shook the man’s hand and remained standing until the door closed. He had ten minutes until his next appointment.

“Damn,” he said to his desk top.

“More delays?”

Fromm did not quite manage to hide his disgust. “We are saving time! The material we will be working on has machining characteristics similar to stainless steel. We must also manufacture blanks for the casting process. Here.”

Fromm unfolded his working drawings.

“We have here a folded cylinder of plutonium. Around the plutonium is a cylinder of beryllium, which is a godsend for our purposes. It is very light, very stiff, an X-ray window, and a neutron reflector. Unfortunately, it is also rather difficult to machine. We must use cubic boron-nitride tools, essentially an analog to industrial diamond. Steel or carbon tools would have results you do not wish to contemplate. We also have health considerations.”

“Beryllium is not toxic,” Ghosn said. “I checked.”

“True, but the dust resulting from the matching process converts to beryllium oxide, which when inspired converts again to beryllium hydroxide, and that causes berylliosis, which is uniformly fatal.” Fromm paused, staring at Ghosn like a schoolmaster before going on.

“Now, around the beryllium is a cylinder of tungsten-rhenium, which we need for its density. We will purchase twelve kilograms in powder form, which we will sinter into cylindrical segments. You know sintering? That is heating it just hot enough to form. Melting and casting is too difficult, and not necessary for our purposes. Around that goes the explosive-lens assembly. And this is just the primary, Ghosn, not even a quarter of our total energy budget.”

“And the precision required ...”

“Exactly. Think of this as the world’s largest ring or necklace. What we produce must be as finely finished as the most beautiful piece of jewelry you have ever seen—or perhaps a precision optical instrument.”

“The tungsten-rhenium?”

“Available from any major electrical concern. It’s used in special filaments for vacuum tubes, numerous other applications, and it’s far easier to work than pure tungsten.”

“Beryllium—oh, yes, it’s used in gyroscopes and other instruments ... thirty kilograms.”

“Twenty-five ... yes, get thirty. You have no idea how lucky we are.”

“How so?”

“The Israeli plutonium is gallium-stabilized. Plutonium has four phase-transformations below melting point, and has the curious habit, in certain temperature regimes, of changing its density by a factor of over twenty percent. It is a multistate metal.”

“In other words, a subcritical mass can—”

“Exactly,” Fromm said. “What appears to be a subcritical mass can under certain circumstances convert itself into criticality. It will not explode, but the gamma- and neutron-flux would be lethal within a radius of ... oh, anywhere from ten to thirty meters, depending on circumstances. That was discovered during the Manhattan Project. They were—no, not lucky. They were brilliant scientists, and as soon as they had a gram or so of plutonium, it was decided to investigate its properties. Had they waited, or simply assumed that they knew more than they did—well ...”

“I had no idea,” Ghosn admitted. Merciful God ...

“Not everything is in books, my young friend, or should I say, not all the books have all the information. In any case, with the addition of gallium, the plutonium is a stable mass. It is actually quite safe to work, as long as we take the proper precautions.”

“So we start by machining out stainless-steel blanks to these specifications, then make our casting-molds-investment casting, of course.”

Fromm nodded. “Correct. Very good, mein Junge.”

“Then when the casting is done, we will machine the bomb material.... I see. Well, we seem to have good machinists.”

They’d “drafted”—that was the term they used—ten men, all Palestinians, from local optical shops, and trained them on the use of the machine tools.

The tools were all that Fromm had said they were. Two years earlier they’d been totally state-of-the-art, identical to the equipment used in the American Y-12 fabrication plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Tolerances were measured by laser interferometry, and the rotating tool heads were computer-controlled in three dimensions through five axes of movement. Instructions were passed to the computers via touch-screens. The design itself had been done on a minicomputer and drawn out on an expensive drafting machine.

Ghosn and Fromm brought the machinists in and set them to work on their first task, making the stainless-steel blank for the plutonium primary that would ignite the thermonuclear fire.

“Now,” Fromm said, “for the explosive lenses....”

“I’ve heard much about you,” Bock said.

“I hope it was good,” Marvin Russell replied with a guarded smile.

My first Indian, Bock thought quickly. He was oddly disappointed. Except for the cheekbones, he might have easily been mistaken for any Caucasian, and even those could seem like a Slav with perhaps a taste of Tatar in his background.... What color there was had come mainly from the sun. The rest of the man was formidable enough, the size and obvious strength.

“I hear you killed a police officer in Greece by snapping his neck.”

“I don’t know why people make a big deal about that,” Russell said with weary honesty. “He was a scrawny little fuck, and I know how to take care of myself.”

Bock smiled and nodded. “I understand how you feel, but your method was impressive in any case. I have heard good things about you, Mr. Russell, and—”

“Just call me Marvin. Everybody else does.”

Bock smiled. “As you wish, Marvin. I am Günther. Particularly your skill with weapons.”

“It’s no big deal,” Russell said, genuinely puzzled. “Anybody can learn to shoot.”

“How do you like it here?”

“I like it a lot. These people—I mean, they have heart, y’know? They ain’t quitters. They work real hard at what they do. I admire that. And what they done for me, Günther, it’s like family, man.”

“We are a family, Marvin. We share everything, good and bad. We all have the same enemies.”

“Yeah, I seen that.”

“We may need your help for something, Marvin. It’s for something fairly important.”

“Okay,” Russell replied simply.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean ‘yes,’ Günther.”

“You haven’t even asked what it is,” the German pointed out.

“Okay.” Marvin smiled. “So tell me.”

“We need you to go back to America in a few months. How dangerous is that for you?”

“Depends. I’ve done time—in prison, I mean. You know that. My fingerprints are on file with the cops, but they don’t have a picture of me—I mean, the one they have is pretty old. I’ve changed since then. They’re looking for me up in the Dakotas, probably. If you send me there, it might be a little tricky.”

“Nowhere near there, Marvin.”

“Then it shouldn’t be much of a problem, dependin’ on what you need me to do.”

“How do you feel about killing people—Americans, I mean.” Bock watched his face for a reaction.

“Americans.” Marvin snorted. “Hey, man, I’m a fuckin’ American, okay? My country ain’t what you think. They stole my country from me, just like what happened to these guys here, okay? It ain’t just here shit like that happened, okay? You want me to do some people for you, yeah, I can do that, if you got a reason. I mean, I don’t kill for fun, I ain’t no psycho, but you got a reason, sure, I can do it.”

“Maybe more than one—”

“I heard you when you said ‘people,’ Günther. I ain’t so stupid that I think ‘people’ means one guy. You just make sure some cops, maybe even some FBI guys are in there, yeah, I’ll help kill all you want. One thing you need to know, though.”

“What’s that?”

“The other side ain’t dumb. They got my brother, remember. They’re serious dudes.”

“We also are serious,” Bock assured him.

“I seen that, man. What can you tell me about the job?”

“What do you mean, Marvin?” Bock asked as casually as he could.

“I mean I grew up there, man, remember? I know stuff that maybe you don’t. Okay, you got security and all that, and you ain’t gonna tell me anything now. Fine, that’s no problem. But you might need my help later on. These guys here are okay, they’re smart and all, but they don’t know dick about America—I mean, not what you need to get around and stuff. You go huntin’, you gotta know the ground. I know the ground.”

“That is why we want your help,” Bock assured him, as though he’d already thought that part all the way through. Actually he had not, and now he was wondering just how useful this man might be.

Andrey Il’ych Narmonov saw himself as the captain of the world’s largest ship of state. That was the good news. The bad news was that the ship had a leaky bottom, a broken rudder, and uncertain engines. Not to mention a mutinous crew. His office in the Kremlin was large, with room to pace about, something he found himself doing all too much of late. That, he thought, was a sign of an uncertain man, and the President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could not afford that, especially when he had an important guest.

Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics, he thought. Though the official name-change had not yet been approved, that was how his people were starting to think. That’s the problem.

The ship of state was breaking up. There was no precedent for it. The dissolution of the British Empire was the example that many liked to use, but that wasn’t quite right, was it? Nor was any other example. The Soviet Union of old had been a unique political creation. What was now happening in the Soviet Union was also entirely without precedent. What had once been exhilarating to him was now more than frightening. He was the one who had to make the hard decisions, and he had no historical model to follow. He was completely on his own, as alone as any man had ever been, with a task larger than any man had ever faced. Lauded in the West as a consummate political tactician, he thought of it himself as an endless succession of crises. Wasn’t it Gladstone? he thought. Wasn’t it he who described his job as being the man on a raft in the rapids, fending off rocks with a pole? How apt, how apt indeed. Narmonov and his country were being swept along by overwhelming forces of history, somewhere down that river was an immense cataract, a falls that could destroy everything ... but he was too busy with the pole and the rocks to look so far ahead. That was what being a political tactician meant. He devoted all his creative energy to day-to-day survival, and was losing sight of the next week ... even the day after tomorrow....

“Andrey Il’ych, you are growing thin,” Oleg Kirilovich Kadishev observed from his leather seat.

“The walking is good for my heart,” the President replied wryly.

“Then perhaps you will join our Olympic team?”

Narmonov stopped for a moment. “It would be nice indeed to compete merely against foreigners. They think I am brilliant. Alas, our own people know better.”

“What can I do to help my President?”

“I need your help, the help of those on the right.”

It was Kadishev’s turn to smile. The press—Western as well as Soviet—never got that straight. The left wing in the Soviet Union was that of the communist hard-liners. For over eighty years, reform in that country had always come from the right. All the men executed by Stalin for wanting to allow the merest bit of personal freedom had always been denounced as Right-Deviationists. But self-styled progressives in the West were always on the political left, and they called their reactionary enemies “conservatives” and generally identified them as being on the political right. It seemed too great a stretch of imagination for Western journalists to adjust their ideological polarity to a different political reality. The newly liberated Soviet journalists had merely aped their Western colleagues and used the foreign descriptions to muddle what was already a chaotic political scene. The same was true of “progressive” Western politicians, of course, who were championing so many of the experiments of the Soviet Union in their own countries—all the experiments which had been taken to the limit and proven to be something worse than mere failures. Perhaps the blackest humor available in all the world was the carping from leftist elements in the West, some of whom were already observing that the backward Russians had failed because they had proven unable to convert socialism into a humanistic government—whereas advanced Western governments could accomplish just that (of course, Karl Marx himself had said that, hadn’t he?). Such people were, Kadishev thought with a bemused shake of his head, no less idealistic than the members of the first Revolutionary Soviets, and just as addlebrained. The Russians had merely taken the revolutionary ideals to their logical limits, and found there only emptiness and disaster. Now that they were turning back—a move that called for political and moral courage such as the world had rarely seen—the West still didn’t understand what was happening! Khrushchev was right all along, the parliamentarian thought. Politicians are the same all over the world.

Mostly idiots.

“Andrey Il’ych, we do not always agree on methods, but we have always agreed on goals. I know you are having trouble with our friends on the other side.”

“And with your side,” President Narmonov pointed out more sharply than he should have.

“And with my side, it is true,” Kadishev admitted casually. “Andrey Il’ych, do you say that we must agree with you on everything?”

Narmonov turned, his eyes momentarily angry and wide. “Please, not that, not today.”

“How may we help you?” Losing control of your emotions, Comrade President? A bad sign, my friend....

“I need your support on the ethnic issue. We cannot have the entire Union break apart.”

Kadishev shook his head forcefully. “That is inevitable. Letting the Baits and the Azeris go eliminates many problems.”

“We need the Azerbaijani oil. If we let that go, our economic situation worsens. If we let the Baits go, the momentum will strip away half of our country.”

“Half our population, true, but scarcely twenty percent of our land. And most of our problems,” Kadishev said again.

“And what of the people who leave? We throw them into chaos and civil war. How many will die, how many deaths on our conscience, eh?” the President demanded.

“Which is a normal consequence of decolonization. We cannot prevent it. By attempting to, we merely keep the civil war within our own borders. That forces us to place too much power into the hands of the security forces, and that is too dangerous. I don’t trust the Army any more than you do.”

“The Army will not launch a coup. There are no Bonapartists in the Red Army.”

“You have greater confidence in their fealty than I do. I think they see a unique historical opportunity. The Party has held the military down since the Tukhachevskiy business. Soldiers have long memories, and they may be thinking that this is their chance.”

“Those people are all dead! And their children with them,” Narmonov countered angrily. It had been over fifty years, after all. Those few with direct memory of the purges were in wheelchairs or living on pensions.

“But not their grandchildren, and there is institutional memory to consider as well.” Kadishev leaned back and considered a new thought that had sprung almost fully formed into his head. Might that be possible ... ?

“They have concerns, yes, and those concerns are little different from my own. We differ on how to deal with the problem, not on the issue of control. While I am not sure of their judgment, I am sure of their loyalty.”

“Perhaps you are correct, but I am not so sanguine.”

“With your help we can present a united front to the forces of early dissolution. That will discourage them. That will allow us to get through a few years of normalization, and then we can consider an orderly departure for the republics with a genuine commonwealth—association, whatever you wish to call it—to keep us associated economically while being separate politically.”

The man is desperate, Kadishev saw. He really is collapsing under the strain. The man who moves about the political arena like a Central Army hockey forward is showing signs of fatigue ... will he survive without my help?

Probably, Kadishev judged. Probably. That was too bad, the younger man thought. Kadishev was the de facto leader of the forces on the “left,” the forces that wanted to break up the entire country and the government that went with it, yanking the remaining nation—based on the Russian Federation—into the 21st century by its throat. If Narmonov fell ... if he found himself unable to continue, then who ...

Why, me, of course.

Would the Americans support him?

How could they fail to support Agent SPINNAKER of their own Central Intelligence Agency?

Kadishev had been working for the Americans since his recruitment by Mary Patricia Foley some six years before. He didn’t think of it as treason. He was working for the betterment of his country, and saw himself as succeeding. He’d fed the Americans information on the internal workings of the Soviet government, some of it highly valuable, some material they could as easily have gotten from their own reporters. He knew that they regarded him as their most valuable source of political intelligence in the Soviet Union, especially now that he controlled fully forty percent of the votes in the country’s bumptious new parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies. Thirty-nine percent, he told himself. One must be honest. Perhaps another eight percent could be his if he made the proper move. There were many shades of political loyalty among the twenty-five hundred members. Genuine democrats, Russian nationalists of both democratic and socialist stripe, radicals of both left and right. There was also a cautious middle of politicians, some genuinely concerned about what course their country might take, others merely seeking to conserve their personal political status. How many could he appeal to? How many could he win over?

Not quite enough ...

But there was one more card he could play, wasn’t there?

Da. If he had the audacity to play it.

“Andrey Il’ych,” he said in a conciliatory voice, “you ask me to depart from an important principle so that I can help you reach a goal we share—but to do so by a route that I distrust. This is a very difficult matter. I am not even sure that I can deliver the support you require. My comrades might well turn their backs on me.” It only agitated the man further.

“Rubbish! I know how well they trust you and your judgment.”

They are not the only ones who trust me, Kadishev told himself.

As with most investigations, this one was done mainly with paper. Ernest Wellington was a young attorney, and an ambitious one. As a law-school graduate and a member of the bar, he could have applied to the FBI and learned the business of investigation properly, but he considered himself a lawyer rather than a cop, besides which he enjoyed politics, and the FBI prided itself on avoiding political wrangling wherever possible. Wellington had no such inhibitions. He enjoyed politics, considered it the life’s blood of government service, and knew it to be the path to speedy advancement both within and without the government. The contacts he was making now would make his value to any of a hundred “connected” law firms jump fivefold, plus making him a known name within the Department of Justice. Soon he would be in the running for a “special-assistant” job. After that—in five years or so—he’d have a crack at a section chiefs office ... maybe even U.S. Attorney in a major city, or head of a special DoJ strike force. That opened the door to political life, where Ernest Wellington could be a real player in the Great Game of Washington. All in all, it was heady wine indeed for an ambitious man of twenty-seven years, an honors graduate from Harvard Law who’d ostentatiously turned down lucrative offers from prestigious firms, preferring instead to devote his early professional years to public service.

Wellington had a pile of paper on his desk. His office was in what was almost an attic in the Justice Department’s building on the Mall, and the view from the single window was of the parking lot that rested in the center of the Depression-era structure. It was small, and the air conditioning was faulty, but it was private. It is little appreciated that lawyers avoid time in court as assiduously as the boastful avoid genuine tests of ability. Had he taken the jobs offered by the New York corporate firms—the best such offer was for over $100,000 per year—his real function would have been that of proofreader, really a glorified secretary, examining contracts for typos and possible loopholes. Early life in the Justice Department was little different. Whereas in a real prosecutorial office he might have been tossed alive into a courtroom environment to sink or swim, here at headquarters he examined records, looking for inconsistencies, nuances, possible technical violations of the law, as though he were an editor for a particularly good mystery writer. Wellington started making his notes.

John Patrick Ryan. Deputy to the Director of Central Intelligence, nominated by the President—politics at work—and confirmed less than two years previously. Prior to that acting Deputy Director (Intelligence), following the death of Vice Admiral James Greer. Prior to that, Special Assistant to DDI Greer, and sometime special representative of the Directorate of Intelligence over in England. Ryan had been an instructor in history at the Naval Academy, a graduate student at Georgetown University, and a broker at the Baltimore office of Merrill Lynch. Also, briefly, a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. Clearly a man who enjoyed career changes, Wellington thought, noting all the important dates.

Personal wealth. The requisite financial statement was in the file, near the top. Ryan was worth quite a bit. Where had it come from? That analysis took several hours. In his days as a broker, J. P. Ryan had been a real cowboy. He’d bet over a hundred thousand dollars on the Chicago and North Western Railroad at the time of the employee takeover, and reaped ... over six million from it. That was his one really big score—sixty-to-one opportunities were not all that common, were they?—but some of the others were also noteworthy. On hitting a personal net worth of eight million, he’d called it quits and gone to Georgetown for his doctorate in history. Continued to play the market on an amateur basis—that wasn’t quite right, was it?—until joining government service. His portfolio was now managed by a multiplicity of investment counselors ... their accounting methods were unusually conservative. Ryan’s net worth looked to be twenty million, maybe a little more. The accounts were managed on a blind basis. All Ryan saw was quarterly earnings statements. There were ways around that, of course, but it was all strictly legal. Proving impropriety was virtually impossible unless they put a wiretap on the line of his brokers, and that was not something easily accomplished.

He had been investigated by the SEC, but that had actually been a spinoff of the SEC’s look at the firm he’d bought into. The summary sheet noted in clipped bureaucratese that no technical violation had been made, but Wellington observed that this judgment was more technical than substantive. Ryan had balked at signing a consent order—understandably—and the government had not pressed him on the issue. That was less understandable, but explainable, since Ryan had not been the actual target of the investigation; someone had decided that it had all probably been a coincidence. Ryan had, however, broken that money out of his main account ... Gentleman’s Agreement? Wellington wrote on his legal pad. Perhaps. If asked, Ryan would respond that he’d done it out of an overscrupulous sense of guilt. The money had gone into T-Bills, rolled over automatically for years and untouched until it had all been used to ... I see. That’s interesting....

Why an educational trust fund? Who was Carol Zimmer? What interest did Ryan have in her children? Timing? Significance?

It was amazing, as always, that so much paper could show so little. Perhaps, Wellington mused, that was the real point of government paperwork, to give the appearance of substance while saying as little as possible. He chuckled. That was also the point of most legal papers, wasn’t it? For two hundred dollars per hour, lawyers loved to quibble over the placement of commas and other weighty matters. He paused, recycling his brain. He had missed something very obvious.

Ryan was not liked by the Fowler Administration. Why, then, had he been nominated for DDCI. Politics? But politics was the reason you selected people unqualified for ... Did Ryan have any political connections at all? The file didn’t show any. Wellington riffled through the papers and found a letter signed by Alan Trent and Sam Fellows of the House Select Committee. That was an odd couple, a gay and a Mormon. Ryan had sailed through confirmation much more easily than Marcus Cabot, even easier than Bunker and Talbot, the President’s two star cabinet members. Part of that was because he was a second-level man, but that didn’t explain it all. That meant political connections, and very fine ones. Why? What connections? Trent and Fellows ... what the hell could those two ever agree on?

It was certain that Fowler and his people didn’t like Ryan, else the Attorney General would not have personally placed Wellington on the case. Case? Was that the right term for his activities? If there was a case, why wasn’t this being handled by the FBI? Politics, obviously. Ryan had worked closely with the FBI on several things ... but ...

William Connor Shaw, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was celebrated as the most honest man in government. Politically naive, of course, but the man dripped integrity, and that wasn’t all so bad a quality in a police agency, was it? Congress thought so. There was even talk of eliminating special prosecutors, the FBI had become so clean, especially after the special prosecutor had bungled the ... but the Bureau was being segregated from this one.

This was an interesting case, wasn’t it? A man could win his spurs on something like this.