The Cardinal of the Kremlin

“WHAT do we know?” Judge Moore asked. It was a little after six in the morning at Langley, before dawn, and the view outside the windows matched the gloom that the Director and his two principal subordinates felt.

“Somebody was trailing cutout number four,” Ritter said. The Deputy Director for Operations riffled through the papers in his hand. “He spotted the tail just before the pass was made and waved the guy off. The tail probably didn’t see his face, and took off after the cutout. Foley said he looked clumsy—that’s pretty strange, but he went with his instincts, and Ed’s pretty good at that. He put an officer on the street to catch the shake-off signal from our agent, but it wasn’t put up. We have to assume that he’s been burned, and we have to assume that the film is in their hands, too, until we can prove otherwise. Foley has broken the chain. CARDINAL will be notified never to use his pickup man again. I’m going to tell Ed to use the routine data-lost signal, not the emergency one.”

“Why?” Admiral Greer asked. Judge Moore answered.

“The information he had en route is pretty important, James. If we give him the scramble signal, he may—hell, we’ve told him that if that happens he’s to destroy everything that might be incriminating. What if he can’t re-create the information? We need it.”

“Besides, Ivan has to do a lot to get back to him,” Ritter went on. “I want Foley to get the data restored and out, and then—then I want to bust CARDINAL out once and for all. He’s paid his dues. After we get the data, then we’ll give him the emergency signal, and if we’re lucky it’ll scare him enough that we can get him to come out.”

“How do you want to do it?” Moore asked.

“The wet way, up north,” the DDO answered.

“Opinions, James?” Moore asked the DDI.

“Makes sense. Take a little time to set up. Ten to fourteen days.”

“Then let’s do that today. You call the Pentagon and make the request. Make sure they give us a good one.”

“Right.” Greer nodded, then smiled. “I know which one to ask for.”

“As soon as we know which, I’ll send our man to her. We’ll use Mr. Clark,” Ritter said. Heads nodded. Clark was a minor legend in the Operations Directorate. If anybody could do it, he could.

“Okay, get the message off to Foley,” the Judge said. “I’ll have to brief the President on this.” He wasn’t looking forward to that.

“Nobody lasts forever. CARDINAL’s beat the odds three times over,” Ritter said. “Make sure you tell him that, too.”

“Yeah. Okay, gentlemen, let’s get to it.”

Admiral Greer went immediately to his office. It was just before seven, and he called the Pentagon, OP-02, the office of the Assistant Chief of Naval Operations (Undersea Warfare). After identifying himself, he asked his first question: “What’s Dallas up to?”

Captain Mancuso was already at work, too. His last deployment on USS Dallas would begin in five hours. She’d sail on the tide. Aft, the engineers were already bringing the nuclear reactor on line. While his executive officer was running things, the Captain was going over the mission orders again. He was heading “up north” one last time. In the U.S. and Royal navies, up north meant the Barents Sea, the Soviet Navy’s backyard. Once there, he’d conduct what the Navy officially termed oceanographic research, which in the case of USS Dallas meant that she’d spend all the time possible trailing Soviet missile submarines. It wasn’t easy work, but Mancuso was an expert at it, and he had, in fact, once gotten a closer look at a Russian “boomer” than any other American sub skipper. He couldn’t discuss that with anyone, of course, not even a fellow skipper. His second Distinguished Service Medal, awarded for that mission, was classified and he couldn’t wear it; though its existence did show in the confidential section of his personnel file, the actual citation was missing. But that was behind him, and Mancuso was a man who always looked forward. If he had to make one final deployment, it might as well be up north. His phone rang.

“Captain speaking,” he answered.

“Bart, Mike Williamson,” said the Submarine Group Two commander. “I need you here, right now.”

“On the way, sir.” Mancuso hung up in surprise. Within a minute he was up the ladder, off the boat, and walking along the blacktopped quay in the Thames, where the Admiral’s car was waiting. He was in the Group Two office four minutes after that.

“Change in orders,” Rear Admiral Williamson announced as soon as the door was closed.

“What’s up?”

“You’re making a high-speed run for Faslane. Some people will be meeting you there. That’s all I know, but the orders originated at OP-02 and came through SUBLANT in about thirty seconds.” Williamson didn’t have to say anything else. Something very hot was up. Hot ones came to Dallas quite often. Actually, they came to Mancuso, but then, he was Dallas.

“My sonar department’s still a little thin,” the Captain said. “I’ve got some good young ones, but my new chief’s in the hospital. If this is going to be especially hairy...”

“What do you need?” Admiral Williamson asked, and got his answer.

“Okay, I’ll get to work on that. You have five days to Scotland, and I can work something out on this end. Drive her hard, Bart.”

“Aye aye, sir.” He’d find out what was happening when he got to Faslane.

“How are you, Russian?” the Archer asked.

He was better. The previous two days, he’d been sure that he’d die. Now he wasn’t so sure. False hope or not, it was something he hadn’t had before. Churkin wondered now if there might really be a future in his life, and if it were something he might have to fear. Fear. He’d forgotten that. He’d faced death twice in a small expanse of time. Once in a falling, burning airplane, hitting the ground and seeing the instant when his life ended; then waking up from death to find an Afghan bandit over him with a knife, and seeing death yet again, only to have it stop and leave. Why? This bandit, the one with the strange eyes, both hard and soft, pitiless and compassionate, wanted him to live. Why? Churkin had the time and energy to ask the question now, but they didn’t give him an answer.

He was riding in something. Churkin realized that he was lying on a steel deck. A truck? No, there was a flat surface overhead, and that, too, was steel. Where am I? It had to be dark outside. No light came through the gunports in the side of—he was in an armored personnel carrier! Where did the bandits get one of those? Where were they—

They were taking him to Pakistan! They would turn him over to ... Americans? And hope changed yet again to despair. He coughed again, and fresh blood erupted from his mouth.

For his part, the Archer felt lucky. His group had met up with another, taking two Soviet BTR-60 infantry carriers out to Pakistan, and they were only too happy to carry the wounded of his band out with them. The Archer was famous, and it could not hurt to have a SAM-shooter protect them if Russian helicopters showed up. But there was little danger of that. The nights were long, the weather had turned foul, and they averaged almost fifteen kilometers per hour on the flat places, and no less than five on the rocky ones. They’d be to the border in an hour, and this segment was held by the mudjaheddin. The guerrillas were starting to relax. Soon they’d have a week of relative peace, and the Americans always paid handsomely for Soviet hardware. This one had night-vision devices that the driver was using to pick his way up the mountain road. For that they could expect rockets, mortar shells, a few machine guns, and medical supplies.

Things were going well for the mudjaheddin. There was talk that the Russians might actually withdraw. Their troops no longer craved close combat with the Afghans. Mainly the Russians used their infantry to achieve contact, then called in artillery and air support. Aside from a few vicious bands of paratroopers and the hated Spetznaz forces, the Afghans felt that they had achieved moral ascendancy on the battlefield—due, of course, to their holy cause. Some of their leaders actually talked about winning, and the talk had gotten to the individual fighters. They, too, now had hope of something other than continued holy war.

The two infantry carriers reached the border at midnight. From there the going was easier. The road down into Pakistan was now guarded by their own forces. The APC drivers were able to speed up and actually enjoy what they were doing. They reached Miram Shah three hours later. The Archer got out first, taking with him the Russian prisoner and his wounded.

He found Emilio Ortiz waiting for him with a can of apple juice. The man’s eyes nearly bugged out when he realized that the man the Archer was carrying was a Russian.

“My friend, what have you brought me?”

“He is badly hurt, but here is what he is.” The Archer handed over one of the man’s shoulder boards, then a briefcase. “And this is what he was carrying.”

“Son of a bitch!” Ortiz blurted in English. He saw the crusted blood around the man’s mouth and realized that his medical condition was not promising, but... what a catch this was! It took another minute of following the wounded to the field hospital before the next question came to the case officer: What the hell do we do with him?

The medical team here, too, was composed mainly of Frenchmen, with a leavening of Italians and a few Swedes. Ortiz knew most of them, and suspected that many of them reported to the DGSE, the French foreign intelligence agency. What mattered, however, was that there were some pretty good doctors and nurses here. The Afghans knew that, too, and protected them as they might have protected the person of Allah. The surgeon who had triage duty put the Russian third on the operating schedule. A nurse medicated him, and the Archer left Abdul to keep an eye on things. He hadn’t brought the Russian this far to have him killed. He and Ortiz went off to talk.

“I heard what happened at Ghazni,” the CIA officer said.

“God’s will. This Russian, he lost a son. I could not—perhaps I had killed enough for one day.” The Archer let out a long breath. “Will he be useful?”

“These are.” Ortiz was already riffling through the documents. “My friend, you do not know what you have done. Well, shall we talk about the last two weeks?”

The debrief took until dawn. The Archer took out his diary and went over everything he’d done, pausing only while Ortiz changed tapes in his recorder.

“That light you saw in the sky.”

“Yes... it seemed very strange,” the Archer said, rubbing his eyes.

“The man you brought out was going there. Here is the base diagram.”

“Where is it, exactly—and what is it?”

“I don’t know, but it’s only about a hundred kilometers from the Afghan border. I can show you on the map. How long will you be staying on this side?”

“Perhaps a week,” the Archer answered.

“I must report this to my superiors. They may want to see you. My friend, you will be greatly rewarded. Make a list of what you need. A long list.”

“And the Russian?”

“We will talk to him, too. If he lives.”

The courier walked down Lazovskiy Pereulok, waiting for his contact. His own hopes were both high and low. He actually believed his interrogator, and by later afternoon he’d taken the chalk that he used and made the proper mark in the proper place. He knew that he’d done so five hours later than he was supposed to, but hoped that his controller would put that off to the evasion process. He hadn’t made the false mark, the one that would warn the CIA officer that he’d been turned. No, he was playing too dangerous a game now. So he walked along the dreary sidewalk, waiting for his handler to show up for the clandestine meet.

What he didn’t know was that his handler was sitting in his office at the American Embassy, and would not travel to this part of Moscow for several weeks. There were no plans to contact the courier for at least that long. The CARDINAL line was gone. So far as CIA was concerned, it might never have existed.

“I think we’re wasting our time,” the interrogator said. He and another senior officer of the Second Directorate sat by the window of an apartment. At the next window was another “Two” man with a camera. He and the other senior officer had learned this morning what Bright Star was, and the General who commanded the Second Chief Directorate had given this case the highest possible priority. A leak of colossal proportions had been uncovered by that broken-down war-horse from “One.”

“You think he lied to you?”

“No. This one was easy to break—and, no, it was not too easy. He broke,” the interrogator said confidently. “I think we failed to get him back on the street quickly enough. I think they know, and I think they’ve broken off the line.”

“But what went wrong—I mean from their point of view, it might have been routine.”

“Da.” The interrogator nodded agreement. “But we know that the information is highly sensitive. So, too, must be its source. They have therefore taken extraordinary measures to protect it. We cannot do things the easy way now.”

“Bring him in, then?”

“Yes.” A car drove up to the man. They watched him get in before they walked to their own vehicle.

Within thirty minutes they were all back in Lefortovo Prison. The interrogator’s face was sad.

“Tell me, why is it I think that you have lied to me?” the man asked.

“But I have not! I did everything I was supposed to do. Perhaps I was late, but I told you that.”

“And the signal you left, was it the one to tell them that we had you?”

“No!” The courier nearly panicked. “I explained all of that, too.”

“The problem, you see, is that we cannot tell the difference between one chalk mark and another. If you are being clever, you may have deceived us.” The interrogator leaned forward. “Comrade, you can deceive us. Anyone can—for a time. But not a very long time.” He paused to let that thought hover in the air for a minute. It was so easy, interrogating the weak ones. Give hope, then take it away; restore it, and remove it yet again. Take their spirits up and down until they no longer knew which was which—and, lacking a measure of their own feelings, those feelings became yours to use.

“We begin again. The woman you meet on the train—who is she?”

“I do not know her name. She is over thirty, but young for her age. Fair hair, slim and pretty. She is always dressed well, like a foreigner, but she is not a foreigner.”

“Dressed like a foreigner—how?”

“Her coat is usually Western. You can tell from the cut and the cloth. She is pretty, as I have said, and she—”

“Go on,” the interrogator said.

“The signal is that I put my hand on her rump. She likes it, I think. Often she presses back against my hand.”

The interrogator hadn’t heard that detail before, but he immediately deemed it the truth. Details like that one were never made up, and it fitted the profile. The female contact was an adventuress. She was not a true professional, not if she reacted like that. And that probably—almost certainly—made her a Russian.

“How many times have you met her like this?”

“Only five. Never the same day of the week, and not on a regular schedule, but always on the second car of the same train.”

“And the man you pass it to?”

“I never see his face, not all of it, I mean. He is always standing with his hand on the bar, and he moves his face to keep his arm between it and me. I have seen some of it, but not all. He is foreign, I think, but I don’t know what nationality.”

“Five times, and you have never seen his face!” the voice boomed, and a fist slammed down on the table. “Do you take me for a fool!”

The courier cringed, then spoke rapidly. “He wears glasses; they are Western, I am sure of it. He usually wears a hat. Also, he has a paper folded, Izvestia, always Izvestia. Between that and his arm, you cannot see more than a quarter of his face. His go-ahead signal is to turn the paper slightly, as though to follow a story, then he turns away to shield his face.”

“How is the pass made, again!”

“As the train stops, he comes forward, as though to get ready to leave at the next station. I have the thing in my hand, and he takes it from behind as I start to leave.”

“So, you know her face, but she does not know yours. He knows your face, but you do not know his ...” The same method that this one uses to make his pickup. That’s a nice piece of fieldcraft, but why do they use the same technique twice on the same line? The KGB used this one too, of course, but it was harder than other methods, doubly so on the Metro’s crowded, frantic rush-hour schedule. He was beginning to think that the most common means of transferring information, the dead-drop, wasn’t part of this line. That, too, was very curious. There should have been at least one dead-drop, else the KGB could roll up the line—maybe ...

They were already trying to identify the source of the leak, of course, but they had to be careful. There was always the possibility that the spy was himself (or herself?) a security officer. That was, indeed, the ideal post for an intelligence agent, since with the job came access to everything, plus foreknowledge of any counterintelligence operations under way. It had happened before—the investigation of a leak had itself alerted the spy, a fact not discovered until some years after the investigation had been terminated. The other really odd thing was that the one photographic frame they had was not of a real diagram, but rather of a hand-drawn one ...

Handwriting—was that the reason that there,were no dead-drops? The spy could be identified that way, couldn’t he? What a foolish way to—

But there was nothing foolish here, was there? No, and there wasn’t anything accidental either. If the techniques on this line were odd, they were also professional. There was another level to this, something that the interrogator didn’t have yet.

“I think that tomorrow, you and I will ride the Metro.”

Colonel Filitov woke up without a pounding in his head, which was pleasure enough. His “normal” morning routine was not terribly different from the other sort, but without the pain and the trip to the baths. He checked the diary tucked away in the desk drawer after he dressed, hoping that he’d be able to destroy it, as per his usual procedure. He already had a new blank diary that he’d begin with when this one was destroyed. There had been hints of a new development on the laser business the previous day, plus a paper on missile systems that he’d be seeing the following week.

On entering the car, he settled back, more alert than usual, and looked out the window during the drive into work. There were a number of trucks on the street, early as it was, and one of them blocked his view of a certain piece of curb. That was his “data-lost” signal. He was slightly annoyed that he couldn’t see where it was, but his reports were rarely lost, and it didn’t trouble him greatly. The “transfer successful” signal was in a different place, and was always easy to see. Colonel Filitov settled back in his seat, gazing out the window as he approached the spot ... there. His head turned to track on the spot, looking for the mark ... but it wasn’t there. Odd. Had the other marker been set? He’d have to check that on the trip home tonight. In his years of work for CIA, several of his reports had been lost one way or another, and the danger signal hadn’t been set, nor had he gotten the telephone call asking for Sergey that would tell him to leave his apartment at once. So there was probably no danger. Just an annoying inconvenience. Well. The Colonel relaxed and contemplated his day at the Ministry.

This time the Metro was fully manned. Fully a hundred Second Directorate men were in this one district, most dressed like ordinary Moscovites, some like workmen. These latter were operating the “black” phone lines installed along with electrical service panels throughout the system. The interrogator and his prisoner were riding trains back and forth on the “purple” and “green” lines, looking for a well-dressed woman in a Western coat. Millions of people traveled the Metro every day, but the counterintelligence officers were confident. They had time working for them, and their profile of the target—an adventuress. She was probably not disciplined enough to separate her daily routine from her covert activities. Such things had happened before. As a matter of faith—shared with their counterparts throughout the world—the security officers held that people who spied on their homeland were defective in some fundamental way. For all their cunning, such traitors would sooner or later connive at their own destruction.

And they were right, at least in this case. Svetlana came onto the station platform holding a bundle wrapped in brown paper. The courier recognized her hair first of all. The style was ordinary, but there was something about the way she held her head, something intangible that made him point, only to have his hand yanked down. She turned and the KGB Colonel got a look at her face. The interrogator saw that she was relaxed, more so than the other commuters who displayed the grim apathy of the Moscovite. His first impression was of someone who enjoyed life. That would change.

He spoke into a small radio, and when the woman got on the next train, she had company. The “Two” man who got on with her had a radio earpiece, almost like a hearing aid. Behind them at the station, the men working the phone circuit alerted agents at every station on the line. When she got off, a full shadow team was ready. They followed her up the long escalator onto the street. Already a car was here, and more officers began the surveillance routine. At least two men always had visual contact with the subject, and the close-in duty rotated rapidly among the group as more and more men joined in the chase. They followed her all the way to the GOSPLAN Building on Marksa Prospekt, opposite the Hotel Moscow. She never knew that she was being followed, and never even attempted to look for evidence of it. Within half an hour, twenty photographs were developed and were shown to the prisoner, who identified her positively.

The procedure after that was more cautious. A building guard gave her name to a KGB officer who admonished him not to discuss the inquiry with anyone. With her name, a full identity was established by lunchtime, and the interrogator, who was now running all aspects of the case, was appalled to learn that Svetlana Vaneyeva was the child of a senior Central Committee member. That would be a complication. Quickly, the Colonel assembled another collection of photographs and reexamined his prisoner, but yet again he selected the right woman from a collection of six. The family member of a Central Committee man was not someone to—but they had identification, and they had a major case. Vatutin went to confer with the head of his directorate.

What happened next was tricky. Though deemed all-powerful by the West, the KGB has always been subservient to the Party apparatus; even the KGB needed permission to trifle with a family member of so powerful an official. The head of the Second Directorate went upstairs to the KGB Chairman. He returned thirty minutes later.

“You may pick her up.”

“The Secretary of the Central Committee—”

“Has not been informed,” the General said.

“But—”

“Here are your orders.” Vatutin took the handwritten sheet, personally signed by the Chairman.

“Comrade Vaneyeva?”

She looked up to see a man in civilian clothes—GOSPLAN was a civilian agency, of course—who stared at her oddly. “Can I help you?”

“I am Captain Klementi Vladimirovich Vatutin of the Moscow Militia. I would like you to come with me.” The interrogator watched closely for a reaction, but got nothing.

“Whatever for?” she asked.

“It is possible that you can help us in the identification of someone. I cannot elaborate further here,” the man said apologetically.

“Will it take long?”

“Probably a few hours. We can have someone drive you home afterward.”

“Very well. I have nothing critical on my desk at the moment.” She rose without another word. Her look at Vatutin betrayed a certain sense of superiority. The Moscow Militia was not an organization that was lavished with respect by local citizens, and the mere rank of captain for a man of his age told her much of his career. Within a minute she had her coat on and the bundle under her arm, and they headed out of the building. At least the Captain was kulturny, she saw, holding the door open for her. Svetlana assumed from this that Captain Vatutin knew who she was—more precisely, who her father was.

A car was waiting and drove off at once. She was surprised at the route, but it wasn’t until they drove past Khokhlovskaya Square that she was sure.

“We’re not going to the Ministry of Justice?” she asked.

“No, we’re going to Lefortovo,” Vatutin replied offhandedly.

“But—”

“I didn’t want to alarm you in the office, you see. I am actually Colonel Vatutin of the Second Chief Directorate.” There was a reaction to that, but Vaneyeva recovered her composure in an instant.

“And what is it that I am to help you with, then?”

She was good, Vatutin saw. This one would be a challenge. The Colonel was loyal to the Party, but not necessarily to its officials. He was a man who hated corruption almost as much as treason. “A small matter—you’ll doubtless be home for dinner.”

“My daughter—”

“One of my people will pick her up. If things run a little late, your father will not be upset to see her, will he?”

She actually smiled at that. “No, Father loves to spoil her.”

“It probably won’t take that long anyway,” Vatutin said, looking out the window. The car pulled through the gates into the prison. He helped her out of the car, and a sergeant held the door open for both of them. Give them hope, then take it away. He took her gently by the arm. “My office is this way. You travel to the West often, I understand.”

“It is part of my work.” She was on guard now, but no more than anyone would be here.

“Yes, I know. Your desk deals with textiles.” Vatutin opened his door and waved her in.

“That’s her!” a voice called. Svetlana Vaneyeva stopped dead, as though frozen in time. Vatutin took her arm again and directed her to a chair.

“Please sit down.”

“What is this!” she said, finally in alarm.

“This man here was caught carrying copies of secret State documents. He has told us that you gave them to him,” Vatutin said as he sat behind his desk.

Vaneyeva turned and stared at the courier. “I have never seen that face in my life! Never!”

“Yes,” Vatutin said dryly. “I know that.”

“What—” She searched for words. “But this makes no sense.”

“You’ve been very well trained. Our friend here says that his signal to pass on the information is that he runs his hand across your rump.”

She turned to face her accuser. “Govnoed! This thing said that! This”—she sputtered for another moment—“worthtess person. Rubbish!”

“So you deny the charge?” Vatutin inquired. Breaking this one would really be a pleasure.

“Of course! I am a loyal Soviet citizen. I am a Party member. My father—”

“Yes, I know about your father.”

“He will hear of this, Colonel Vatutin, and if you threaten me—”

“We do not threaten you, Comrade Vaneyeva, we ask for information. Why were you on the Metro yesterday? I know that you have your own car.”

“I often ride the Metro. It is simpler than driving, and I had to make a stop.” She picked her package up off the floor. “Here. I dropped off the coat for cleaning. It is inconvenient to park the car, go in, and then drive on. So I took the underground. Same thing today, when I picked it up. You can check at the cleaners.”

“And you did not pass this to our friend here?” Vatutin held up the film cassette.

“I don’t even know what that is.”

“Of course.” Colonel Vatutin shook his head. “Well, there we are.” He pressed a button on his intercom set. The office’s side door opened a moment later. Three people came in. Vatutin waved to Svetlana. “Prepare her.”

Her reaction was not so much panic as disbelief. Svetlana Vaneyeva tried to bolt from the chair, but a pair of men grabbed her by the shoulders and held her in place. The third rolled up the sleeve on her dress and stuck a needle in her arm before she had the presence of mind to shout. “You can’t,” she said, “you can’t ...”

Vatutin sighed. “Ah, but we can. How long?”

“That’ll keep her under for at least two hours,” the doctor replied. He and his two orderlies picked her out of the chair. Vatutin came around and got the parcel. “She’ll be ready for you as soon as I do the medical check, but I anticipate no problems. Her medical file is clean enough.”

“Excellent. I’ll be down after I have something to eat.” He gestured to the other prisoner. “You can take him away. I think we’re done with him.”

“Comrade, I—” the courier began, only to be cut off.

“Do not dare to use that word again.” The reprimand was all the harsher for its soft delivery.

Colonel Bondarenko now ran the Ministry’s laser-weapons desk. It was by the decision of Defense Minister Yazov, of course, as recommended by Colonel Filitov.

“So, Colonel, what news do you bring us?” Yazov asked.

“Our colleagues at KGB have delivered to us partial plans for the American adaptive-optics mirror.” He handed over two separate copies of the diagrams.

“And we cannot do this ourselves?” Filitov asked.

“The design is actually quite ingenious, and, the report says, an even more advanced model is in the design stages right now. The good news is that it requires fewer actuators—”

“What is that?” Yazov asked.

“The actuators are the mechanisms which alter the contours of the mirror. By lowering the number of them you also reduce the requirements of the computer system that operates the mirror assembly. The existing mirror—this one here—requires the services of an extremely powerful supercomputer, which we cannot yet duplicate in the Soviet Union. The new mirror is projected to require only a fourth as much computer power. This allows both a smaller computer to operate the mirror and also a simpler control program.” Bondarenko leaned forward. “Comrade Minister, as my first report indicated, one of the principal difficulties with Bright Star is the computer system. Even if we were able to manufacture a mirror like this one, we do not as yet have the computer hardware and software to operate it at maximum efficiency. I believe we could do so if we had this new mirror.”

“But we don’t have the new mirror plans yet?” Yazov asked.

“Correct. The KGB is working on that.”

“We can’t even replicate these ‘actuators’ yet,” Filitov groused. “We’ve had the specifications and diagrams for several months and still no factory manager has delivered—”

“Time and funds, Comrade Colonel,” Bondarenko chided. Already he was learning to speak with confidence in this rarest of atmospheres.

“Funding,” Yazov grunted. “Always funding. We can build an invulnerable tank—with enough funds. We can catch up with Western submarine technology—with enough funding. Every pet project of every academician in the Union will deliver the ultimate weapon—if only we can provide enough funding. Unfortunately there is not enough for all of them.” There’s one way in which we’ve caught up with the West!

“Comrade Minister,” Bondarenko said, “I have been a professional soldier for twenty years. I have served on battalion and divisional staffs, and I have seen close combat. Always I have served the Red Army, only the Red Army. Bright Star belongs to another service branch. Despite this, I tell you that if necessary we should deny funds for tanks, and ships, and airplanes in order to bring Bright Star to completion. We have enough conventional weapons to stop any NATO attack, but we have nothing to stop Western missiles from laying waste to our country.” He drew back. “Please forgive me for stating my opinion so forcefully.”

“We pay you to think,” Filitov observed. “Comrade Minister, I find myself in agreement with this young man.”

“Mikhail Semyonovich, why is it that I sense a palace coup on the part of my colonels?” Yazov ventured a rare smile, and turned to the younger man. “Bondarenko, within these walls I expect you to tell me what you think. And if you can persuade this old cavalryman that your science-fiction project is worthwhile, then I must give it serious thought. You say that we should give this program crash status?”

“Comrade Minister, we should consider it. Some basic research remains, and I feel that its funding priority should be increased dramatically.” Bondarenko stopped just short of what Yazov suggested. That was a political decision, one into which a mere colonel ought not stick his neck. It occurred to the CARDINAL that he had actually underestimated this bright young colonel.

“Heart rate’s coming up,” the doctor said almost three hours later. “Time zero, patient conscious.” A reel-to-reel tape recorder took down his words.

She didn’t know the point at which sleep ended and consciousness began. The line is a fuzzy one for most people, particularly so in the absence of an alarm or the first beam of sunlight. She was given no signals. Svetlana Vaneyeva’s first conscious emotion was puzzlement. Where am I? she asked herself after about fifteen minutes. The lingering aftereffects of the barbiturates eased away, but nothing replaced the comfortable relaxation of dreamless sleep. She was ... floating?

She tried to move, but ... couldn’t? She was totally at rest, every square centimeter of her body was evenly supported so that no muscle was stretched or strained. Never had she known such wonderful relaxation. Where am I?

She could see nothing, but that wasn’t right, either. It was not black, but ... gray ... like a night cloud reflecting the city lights of Moscow, featureless, but somehow textured.

She could hear nothing, not the rumble of traffic, not the mechanical sounds of running water or slamming doors ...

She turned her head, but the view remained the same, a gray blankness, like the inside of a cloud, or a ball of cotton, or—

She breathed. The air had no smell, no taste, neither moist nor dry, not even a temperature that she could discern. She spoke ... but incredibly she heard nothing. Where am I!

Svetlana began to examine the world more carefully. It took about half an hour of careful experimentation. Svetlana kept control of her emotions, told herself forcefully to be calm, to relax. It had to be a dream. Nothing untoward could really be happening, not to her. Real fear had not yet begun, but already she could feel its approach. She mustered her determination and fought to hold it off. Explore the environment. Her eyes swept left and right. There was only enough light to deny her blackness. Her arms were there, but seemed to be away from her sides, and she could not move them inward, though she tried for what seemed like hours. The same was true of her legs. She tried to ball her right hand into a fist ... but she couldn’t even make her fingers touch one another.

Her breathing was more rapid now. It was all she had. She could feel the air come in and out, could feel the movement of her chest, but nothing else. Closing her eyes gave her the choice of a black nothing over a gray one, but that was all. Where am I!

Movement, she told herself, more movement. She rolled around, searching for resistance, searching for any tactile feeling outside her own body. She was rewarded with nothing at all, just the same slow, fluid resistance—and whichever way she turned, the sensation of floating was the same. It mattered not—she could tell not—whether gravity had her up or down, left side or right. It was all the same. She screamed as loudly as she could, just to hear something real and close, just to be sure that she at least had herself for company. All she heard was the distant, fading echo of a stranger.

The panic started in earnest.

“Time twelve minutes ... fifteen seconds,” the doctor said into the tape recorder. The control booth was five meters above the tank. “Heart rate rising, now one forty, respiration forty-two, acute anxiety reaction onset.” He looked over to Vatutin. “Sooner than usual. The more intelligent the subject...”

“The greater the need for sensory input, yes,” Vatutin said gruffly. He’d read the briefing material on this procedure, but was skeptical. This was brand-new, and required a kind of expert assistance that he’d never needed in his career.

“Heart rate appears to have peaked at one seventy-seven, no gross irregularities.”

“How do you mute her own speech?” Vatutin asked the doctor.

“It’s new. We use an electronic device to duplicate her voice and repeat it back exactly out of phase. That neutralizes her sound almost completely, and it’s as though she were screaming in a vacuum. It took two years to perfect.” He smiled. Like Vatutin he enjoyed his work, and he had here a chance to validate years of effort, to overturn institutional policy with something new and better, that had his name on it.

Svetlana hovered on the edge of hyperventilation, but the doctor altered the gas mixture going into her. He had to keep a very close watch on her vital signs. This interrogation technique left no marks on the body, no scars, no evidence of torture—it was, in fact, not a form of torture at all. At least, not physically. The one drawback to sensory deprivation, however, was that the terror it induced could drive people into tachycardia—and that could kill the subject.

“That’s better,” he said, looking at the EKG readout. “Heart rate stabilized at one thirty-eight, a normal but accelerated sinus rhythm. Subject is agitated but stable.”

Panic didn’t help. Though her mind was still frantic, Svetlana’s body drew back from damaging itself. She fought to assert control and again felt herself become strangely calm.

Am I alive or dead? She searched all her memories, all her experiences, and found nothing ... but ...

There was a sound.

What is it?

Lub-dub, lub-dub ... what was it ... ?

It was a heart! Yes!

Her eyes were still open, searching the blankness for the source of the sound. There was something out there, if only she could find it. Her mind searched for a way. I have to get to it. I must grab hold of it.

But she was trapped inside something that she couldn’t even describe. She started moving again. Again she found nothing to grab, nothing to touch.

She was only beginning to understand how alone she was. Her senses cried out for data, for input, for something! The sensory centers of her brain were seeking sustenance and finding only a vacuum.

What if I am dead? she asked herself.

Is this what happens when you’re dead ... Nothing-ness ... ? Then a more troubling thought:

Is this hell?

But there was something. There was that sound. She concentrated on it, only to find that the harder she tried to listen, the harder it was to hear. It was like trying to grab for a cloud of smoke, it was only there when she didn’t try to—but she had to grab it!

And so she tried. Svetlana screwed her eyes shut and concentrated all of her will on the repeating sound of a human heart. All she accomplished was to blank the sound out of her own senses. It faded away, until it was only her imagination that heard it and then that, too, became bored.

She moaned, or thought she did. She heard almost nothing. How could she speak and not hear it?

Am I dead? The question had an urgency that demanded an answer, but the answer might be too dreadful to contemplate. There had to be something ... but did she dare? Yes!

Svetlana Vaneyeva bit her tongue as hard as she could. She was rewarded with the salty taste of blood.

I am alive! she told herself. She reveled in this knowledge for what seemed a very long time. But even long times had to end:

But where am I? Am I buried ... alive? BURIED ALIVE!

“Heart rate increasing again. Looks like the onset of the secondary anxiety period,” the doctor observed for the recording. It really was too bad, he thought. He’d assisted in preparing the body. A very attractive woman, her smooth belly marred only by a mother’s stretchmarks. Then they’d oiled her skin and dressed her in the specially made wetsuit, one made of the best-quality Nomex rubber, so smooth that you could barely feel it when dry—and when filled with water, it hardly seemed there at all. Even the water in the tank was specially formulated, heavy in salt content so that she was neutrally buoyant. Her gyrations around the tank had twisted her upside down and she hadn’t known. The only real problem was that she might tangle the air lines, but a pair of divers in the tank prevented this, always careful not to touch her or to allow the hose to do so. Actually, the divers had the hardest job in the unit.

The doctor gave Colonel Vatutin a smug look. Years of work had gone into this most secret part of Lefortovo’s interrogation wing. The pool, ten meters wide and five deep, the specially salted water, the custom-designed suits, the several man-years of experimentation to back up the theoretical work—all these went to devise a means of interrogation that was in all ways better than the antiquated methods KGB had used since the revolution. Except for the one subject that had died of an anxiety-induced heart attack ... The vital signs changed again.

“There we go. Looks like we’re into the second stage. Time one hour, six minutes.” He turned to Vatutin. “This is usually the long phase. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts with this subject.”

It seemed to Vatutin that the doctor was a child playing an elaborate, cruel game; as much as he wanted what this subject knew, part of him was horrified by what he watched. He wondered if it came from fear that one day it might be tried on him ...

Svetlana was limp. Tremors from the extended hours of terrors had exhausted her limbs. Her breaths now came in shallow pants, like a woman holding off the urge to deliver her child. Even her body had deserted her now, and her mind sought to escape its confines and explore on its own. It seemed to her consciousness that she separated from the useless sack of flesh, that her spirit, soul, whatever it was, was alone now, alone and free. But the freedom was no less a curse than what had gone before.

She could move freely now, she could see the space around her, but it was all empty. She moved as though swimming or flying in a three-dimensional space whose limits she could not discern. She felt her arms and legs moving effortlessly, but when she looked to see her limbs, she found that they were out of her field of view. She could feel them move, but ... they weren’t there. The part of her mind that was still rational told her that this was all an illusion, that she was swimming toward her own destruction—but even that was preferable to being alone, wasn’t it?

This effort lasted for an eternity. The most gratifying part was the lack of fatigue in her invisible limbs. Svetlana shut out her misgivings and reveled in the freedom, in being able to see the space around her. Her pace speeded up. She imagined that the space ahead of her was brighter than that behind her. If there were a light she would find it, and a light would make all the difference. Part of her remembered the joy of swimming as a child, something she hadn’t done in ... fifteen years, wasn’t it? She was the school champion at swimming underwater, could hold her breath far longer than all the others. The memories made her young again, young and spry and prettier and better-dressed than all the others. Her face took on an angelic smile and ignored the warnings from the remaining shreds of her intellect.

She swam for days, it seemed, for weeks, always toward the brighter space ahead. It took a few more days to realize that the space never got any brighter, but she ignored this last warning of her consciousness. She swam harder, and felt fatigue for the first time. Svetlana Vaneyeva ignored that, too. She had to use her freedom to advantage. She had to find where she was, or better yet find a way out of this place. This horrible place.

Her mind moved yet again, traveling away from her body, and when it had reached a sufficient height, it looked back down at the distant, swimming figure. Even from its great height it could not see the edges of this wide, amorphous world, but she could see the tiny figure below her, swimming alone in the void, moving its spectral limbs in futile rhythm ... going nowhere.

The scream from the wall speaker almost made Vatutin bolt from his chair. Perhaps Germans had heard that once, the scream of the victims of their death camps when the doors were shut and the gas crystals had sprinkled down. But this was worse. He’d seen executions. He’d seen torture. He had heard cries of pain and rage and despair, but he had never heard the scream of a soul condemned to something worse than hell.

“There ... that ought to be the beginning of the third stage.”

“What?”

“You see,” the doctor explained, “the human animal is a social animal. Our beings and our senses are designed to gather data that allow us to react both to our environment and our fellow human beings. Take away the human company, take away all sensory input, and the mind is totally alone with itself. There is ample data to demonstrate what happens. Those Western idiots who sail around the world alone. for example. A surprising number go insane, and many disappear; probably suicides. Even those who survive, those who use their radios on a daily basis—they often need physicians to monitor them and warn them against the psychological hazards of such solitude. And they can see the water around. They can see their boats. They can feel the motion of the waves. Take all that away ...” The doctor shook his head. “They’d last perhaps three days. We take everything away, as you see.”

“And the longest they’ve lasted in here?”

“Eighteen hours—he was a volunteer, a young field officer from the First Directorate. The only problem is that the subject cannot know what is happening to him. That alters the effect. They still break, of course, but not as thoroughly.”

Vatutin took a breath. That was the first good news that he’d heard here. “And this one, how much longer?”

The doctor merely looked at his watch and smiled. Vatutin wanted to hate him, but recognized that this physician, this healer, was merely doing what he’d been doing for years, more quickly, and with no visible damage that might embarrass the State at the public trials that the KGB now had to endure. Then, there was the added benefit that even the doctor hadn’t expected when he’d begun the program ...

“So ... what is this third stage?”

Svetlana saw them swimming around her form. She tried to warn it, but that would mean getting back inside, and she didn’t dare. It was not so much something she could see, but there were shapes, predatory shapes plying the space around her body. One of them closed in, but turned away. Then it turned back again. And so did she. She tried to fight against it, but something drew her back into the body that was soon to be extinguished. She got there just in time. As she told her limbs to swim faster, it came up from behind. The jaws opened and enveloped her entire body, then closed slowly around her. The last thing she saw was the light toward which she’d been swimming—the light, she finally knew, that was never there. She knew her protest was a vain one, but it exploded from her lips.

“No!” She didn’t hear it, of course.

She returned now, condemned to go back to her useless real body, back to the gray mass before her eyes and the limbs that could move only without purpose. She somehow understood that her imagination had tried to protect her, to get her free—and had failed utterly. But she couldn’t turn her imagination off, and now its efforts turned destructive. She wept without sound. The fear she felt now was worse than mere panic. At least panic was an escape, a denial of what she faced, a retreat into herself. But there was no longer a self that she could find. She’d watched that die, had been there when it happened. Svetlana was without a present, certainly without a future. All she had now was a past, and her imagination selected only the worst parts of that ...

“Yes, we’re in the final stage now,” the doctor said. He lifted the phone and ordered a pot of tea. “This was easier than I expected. She fits the profile better than I realized.”

“But she hasn’t told us anything yet,” Vatutin objected.

“She will.”

She watched all the sins of her life. That helped her to understand what was happening. This was the hell whose existence the State denied, and she was being punished. That had to be it. And she helped. She had to. She had to see it all again and understand what she’d done. She had to participate in the trial within her own mind. Her weeping never stopped. Her tears ran for days as she watched herself doing things that she ought never to have done. Every transgression of her life played out before her eyes in fullest detail. Especially those of the past two years ... Somehow she knew that those were the ones that had brought her here. Svetlana watched every time she had betrayed her Motherland. The first coy flirtations in London, the clandestine meetings with serious men, the warnings not to be frivolous, and then the times she had used her importance to breeze through customs control, playing the game and enjoying herself as she committed her most heinous crimes. Her moans took on a recognizable timbre. Over and over she said it without knowing.

“I’m sorry ...”

“Now comes the tricky part.” The doctor put on his headset. He had to make some adjustments on his control board. “Svetlana ...” he whispered into the microphone.

She didn’t hear it at first, and it was some time before her senses were able to tell her that there was something crying out to be noticed.

Svetlana ... the voice called to her. Or was it her imagination ... ?

Her head twisted around, looking for whatever it was.

Svetlana ... it whispered again. She held her breath as long as she could, commanded her body to be still, but it betrayed her yet again. Her heart raced, and the pounding blood in her ears blanked out the sound, if it was a sound. She let out a despairing moan, wondering if she had imagined the voice, wondering if it was only getting worse ... or might there be some hope ... ?

Svetlana ... Slightly more than a whisper, enough to detect emotional content. The voice was so sad, so disappointed. Svetlana, what have you done?

“I didn‘t, I didn’t—” she sputtered, and still could not hear her own voice as she called out from the grave. She was rewarded with renewed silence. After what seemed an hour she screamed: “Please, please come back to me!”

Svetlana, the voice repeated finally, what have you done ... ?

“I’m sorry ...” she repeated in a voice choked with tears.

“What have you done?” it asked again. “What about the film...?”

“Yes!” she answered, and in moments she told all.

“Time eleven hours, forty-one minutes. The exercise is concluded.” The doctor switched off the tape recorder. Next he flicked the lights in the pool room on and off a few times. One of the divers in the tank waved acknowledgment and jabbed a needle into Subject Vaneyeva’s arm. As soon as her body went completely limp, she was taken out. The doctor left the control room and went down to see her.

She was lying on a gurney when he got there, the wetsuit already taken off. He sat beside the unconscious form and held her hand as the technician jabbed her with a mild stimulant. She was a pretty one, the doctor thought as her breathing picked up. He waved the technician out of the room, leaving the two of them alone.

“Hello, Svetlana,” he said in his gentlest voice. The blue eyes opened, saw the lights on the ceiling, and the walls. Then her head turned toward him.

He knew he was indulging himself, but he’d worked long into the night and the next day on this case, and this was probably the most important application of his program to date. The naked woman leaped off the table into his arms and nearly strangled him with a hug. It wasn’t because he was particularly good-looking, the doctor knew, just that he was a human being, and she wanted to touch one. Her body was still slick with oil as her tears fell on his white laboratory coat. She would never commit another crime against the State, not after this. It was too bad that she’d have to go to a labor camp. Such a waste, he thought as he examined her. Perhaps he could do something about that. After ten minutes she was sedated again, and he left her asleep.

“I gave her a drug called Versed. It’s a new Western one, an amnesiac.”

“Why one of those?” Vatutin asked.

“I give you another option, Comrade Colonel. When she wakes up later this morning, she will remember very little. Versed acts like scopolamine, but is more effective. She will remember no firm details, and very little else that happened to her. It will all seem to be a fearful dream. Versed is also an hypnotic. For example, I can go back to her now and make a suggestion that she will not remember anything, but that she may never betray the State again. There is roughly an eighty-percent probability that both suggestions will never be violated.”

“You’re joking!”

“Comrade, one effect of this technique is that she has condemned herself more forcefully than the State ever could. She feels more remorse now for her actions than she would before a firing squad. Surely you have read 1984? It might have been a dream when Orwell wrote it, but with modern technology, we can do it. The trick is not breaking the person from without, but doing it from within.”

“You mean we can use her now ... ?”