Red Storm Rising

13. The Strangers Arrive and Depart

It was the traffic that did it. The envelope came as promised to the proper post office box, and the key worked as he'd been told to expect. Minimum personnel involvement. The major grumbled at having to expose himself in the open this way, but it wasn't the first time he'd had to work with the KGB, and he needed this up-to-date information if his mission were to have any chance of success. Besides, he smiled briefly, the Germans are so proud of their postal service…

The major folded the oversized envelope and tucked it into his jacket pocket before leaving the building. His clothing was entirely German in origin, as were the sunglasses which he donned on opening the door. He scanned the sidewalk in both directions, looking for anyone who might be trailing him. Nothing. The KGB officer had promised him that the safe house was totally secure, that no one had the least suspicion that they were here. Perhaps. The taxi was waiting for him across the street. He was in a hurry. The cars were stopped on the street, and he decided to go straight across instead of walking to the comer. The major was from Russia and not accustomed to the unruly European traffic where the pedestrians are expected to follow the rules too. He was a hundred meters from the nearest traffic cop, and the nearby German drivers could sense that the cop's back was turned. It should have been as much a surprise to the major as to American tourists that, when driving, the orderly Germans were anything but. He stepped off the curb without looking, just as the traffic started moving.

He never even saw the accelerating Peugeot. It was not moving fast, only twenty-five kilometers per hour. Fast enough. The right fender caught him on the hip, spun him around, and catapulted the major into a lamppost. He was knocked unconscious before he knew what had happened, which was just as well, since his legs remained in the street and the Peugeot's rear wheel crushed both ankles. The damage to his head was spectacular. A major artery was cut open, and blood fountained onto the sidewalk as he lay motionless on his face. The car stopped at once, its driver leaping out to see what she had done. There was a scream from a child who had never seen so much blood, and a postman raced to the comer to summon the police officer standing in the traffic circle, while another man went into a store to call an ambulance.

The stopped traffic allowed the taxi driver to leave his vehicle and come over. He tried to get close, but already a half dozen men were bending over the body.

"Er ist tot," one observed, and the body was pale enough to make one think so. The major was already in shock. So was the Peugeot's driver, whose eyes were already dripping tears as her breaths came in irregular sobs. She was trying to tell everyone that the man had stepped right in front of her car, that she hadn't had a chance to stop. She spoke in French, which only made things more difficult.

Pushing through the spectators, the taxi driver was almost close enough to touch the body by now. He had to get that envelope… but then the policeman arrived.

"Alles zurfick!" the cop ordered, remembering his training: first, get things under control. His training also enabled him to resist the instinct to move the body. This was a head injury, perhaps a neck injury also, and those were not to be moved except by Experten. A bystander called out that he had summoned an ambulance. The policeman nodded curtly and hoped it would arrive soon. Making traffic accident reports was far more routine than watching an unconscious-or dead? — man bleed untidily on the sidewalk. He looked up gratefully a moment later to see a lieutenant — a senior watch supervisor-pushing his way in.

"Ambulance?"

"On the way, Herr Leutnant. I am Dieter, Gunther-traffic detail. My post is down the street."

"Who was driving the car here?" the lieutenant asked.

The driver stood as erect as she could and started gasping out her story in French. A passerby who had seen the whole thing cut her off.

"This one just stepped off the curb without looking. The lady had no chance to stop. I am a banker, and I came out of the post office right behind this one. He tried to cross at the wrong place and stepped into the street without looking at the traffic. My card." The banker handed the lieutenant his business card.

"Thank you, Dr. Muller. You have no objection to making a statement?"

"Of course. I can come directly to your station if you wish."

"Good." The lieutenant rarely had one this clean-cut.

The taxi driver just stood at the edge of the crowd. An experienced KGB case officer, he'd seen operations go bad before, but this was… absurd. There was always something new that could ruin an operation, so often the most simple, most foolish thing. This proud Spetznaz commando, cut down by a middle-aged Frenchwoman driving a sedan! Why hadn't he looked at the damned traffic? I should have gotten someone else to fetch the envelope, and screw the damned orders. Security, he swore behind an impassive face. Orders from Moscow Center: minimum personnel involvement. He walked back across the street to his cab, wondering how he'd explain this to his control. Mistakes were never the Center's fault.

The ambulance arrived next. The sergeant removed the victim's wallet from his pants. The victim was one Siegfried Baum-wonderful, the lieutenant thought, a Jew-from the Altona district of Hamburg. The driver of the car was French. He decided he had to ride in to the hospital with the victim. An "international" accident: there'd be extra paperwork on this. The lieutenant wished he'd stayed in the Gasthaus across the street and finished his after lunch pilsener. So much for devotion to duty. Then there was his possible mobilization to worry about…

The ambulance crew worked quickly. A cervical collar was fitted around the victim's neck, and a backboard brought in before they rolled him over onto the stretcher. The broken lower legs were immobilized with cardboard splints. The paramedic clucked over them. Both ankles looked to be badly crushed. The whole procedure took six minutes by the lieutenant's watch, and he boarded the ambulance, leaving three police officers to manage the rest of the incident and clear the accident scene.

"How bad is he?"

"Probably fractured his skull. He has lost a lot of blood. What happened?"

"Walked out into traffic without watching."

"Idiot," the paramedic commented. "As if we don't have work enough."

"Will he live?"

"Depends on the head injury." The ambulanceman shrugged. "The surgeons will be working on him within the hour. You know his name? I have a form to fill out."

"Baum, Siegfried. Kaiserstrasse 17, Altona District, Hamburg."

"Well, he'll be in the hospital in four minutes." The paramedic took his pulse and made a notation. "Doesn't look Jewish."

"Be careful saying things like that," the lieutenant cautioned.

"My wife is Jewish. His blood pressure is dropping rapidly." The ambulanceman debated starting an IV, but decided against it. Better to let the surgeons make that decision.

"Hans, have you radioed in?"

"Ja, they know what to expect," the driver replied. "Isn't Ziegler on duty today?"

"I hope so."

The driver horsed the ambulance into a hard left turn, and all the while the two-tone siren cleared traffic ahead of them. One minute later he halted the Mercedes and backed it into the emergency receiving area. A doctor and two orderlies were already waiting.

German hospitals are nothing if not efficient. Within ten minutes the victim, now a patient, had been intubated to protect his airway, punctured for a unit of O-positive blood and a bottle of IV fluids, and wheeled up to neurosurgery for immediate surgery at the hands of Professor Anton Ziegler. The lieutenant had to stay in the emergency room with the registrar.

"So who was he?" the young doctor asked. The policeman gave the information over.

"A German?"

"Does that seem strange?" the lieutenant asked.

"Well, when the radio call came in, and said you were coming also, I assumed that this was, well, sensitive, as though a foreigner were injured."

"The auto was driven by a Frenchwoman."

"Ach, that explains it. I thought he was the foreigner."

"Why so?"

"His dental work. I noticed when I intubated him. He has a number of cavities, and they've been repaired with stainless steel-sloppy work."

"Perhaps he originally comes from the East Zone," the lieutenant observed. The registrar snorted.

No German ever did that work! A carpenter could do better." The doctor filled out the admission form rapidly.

"What are you telling me?"

"He has poor dental work. Strange. He is very fit. Dressed well. Jewish. But he has miserable dental work." The doctor sat down. "We see many strange things, of course."

"Where are his personal effects?" The lieutenant was a naturally curious type, one reason he'd become a policeman after his service in the Bundeswehr. The doctor walked the officer to a room where the personal effects were inventoried for secure storage by a hospital employee.

They found the clothing neatly arranged, with the jacket and shirt separate so that their bloodstains would not damage anything else. Pocket change, a set of keys, and a large envelope were set aside for cataloging. The orderly was filling out a form, looking up to list exactly what had come in with the patient.

The policeman lifted the manila envelope. It had been mailed from Stuttgart yesterday evening. A ten-mark stamp. On an impulse he pulled out a pocketknife and slit the top of the envelope open. Neither the doctor nor the orderly objected. This was a police officer, after all.

A large and two smaller envelopes were inside. He opened the large one first and extracted the contents. First he saw a diagram. It looked ordinary enough until he saw that it was a photocopy of a German Army document stamped Geheim. Secret. Then the name: Lammersdorf. He was holding a map of a NATO communications headquarters not thirty kilometers from where he stood. The police lieutenant was a captain in the German Army Reserves, and held an intelligence billet. Who was Siegfried Baum? He opened the other envelopes. Next he went to a phone.

The transport jet arrived right on time. A fair breeze greeted them from the sea as Toland emerged from the cargo door. A pair of sailors was there to direct the arrivals. Toland was pointed to a helicopter a hundred yards away, its rotor already turning. He walked quickly toward it, along with four other men. Five minutes later he was airborne, his first visit to Spain having lasted exactly eleven minutes. No one attempted conversation. Toland looked out one of the small windows available. They were over a patch of blue water, evidently flying southwest. They were aboard a Sea King antisubmarine helicopter. The crew chief was also a sonar operator, and he was fiddling with his gear, evidently running some sort of test. The interior walls of the aircraft were bare. Aft was the sonobuoy storage, and the dipping sonar transducer was caged in its compartment in the floor. For all that, the aircraft was crowded, most of its space occupied by weapon and sensor instrumentation. They'd been in the air for half an hour when the helo started circling. Two minutes later, they landed on USS NIMITZ.

The flight deck was hot, noisy, and stank of jet fuel. A deck crewman motioned them toward a ladder which led down to the catwalk surrounding the deck, and into a passageway beneath it. Here they encountered air conditioning and relative quiet, sheltered from the flight operations going on overhead.

"Lieutenant Commander Toland?" a yeoman called out.

"Here."

"Please come with me, sir."

Toland followed the sailor through the rabbit warren of compartments below the flight deck, and was finally pointed to an open door.

"You must be Toland," observed a somewhat frazzled officer.

"Must be-unless the time zone changes did something."

"You want the good news or the bad news?"

"Bad."

"Okay, you'll have to hot-bunk. Not enough berths for all of us intel types. Shouldn't matter much, though. I haven't slept for three days-one of the reasons you're here. The good news is that you just got another half a stripe. Welcome aboard, Commander. I'm Chip Bennett." The officer handed Toland a telex sheet. "Looks as though CINCLANT likes you. Nice to have friends in high places."

The message announced tersely that Lieutenant Commander Robert A. Toland, III, USNR, had been "frocked" as a commander, USNR, which gave him the right to wear the three gold stripes of a commander, but not to collect a commander's pay just yet. It was like a kiss from one's sister. Well, he reflected, maybe a cousin.

"I guess it's a step in the right direction. What am I going to be doing here?"

"Theoretically you're supposed to assist me, but we're so friggin' overwhelmed with information at the moment that we're divvying the territory up some. I'm going to let you handle the morning and evening briefs to the battle group commander. We do that at 0700 and 2000. Rear Admiral Samuel B. Baker, Jr. Son of a B. He's an ex-nuc. Likes it quick and clean, with footnotes and sources on the writeup to read afterwards. He almost never sleeps. Your battle station will be in the CIC with the group tactical warfare officer." Walker rubbed his eyes. "So what the hell is happening in this crazy world?"

"What's it look like?" Toland answered.

"Yeah. Something new just came in. The space shuttle Atlantis was pulled off the pad at Kennedy today, supposedly for a computer glitch, right? Three newspapers just broke a story that she was taken down for payload replacement. They were supposed to loft three or four commercial communications birds. Instead, the payload is reconnaissance satellites."

"I guess people are starting to take this seriously."

"Siegfried Baum" awoke six hours later to see three men wearing surgical garb. The effect of the anesthesia still heavy on him, his eyes could not focus properly.

"How are you feeling?" one asked. In Russian.

"What happened to me?" The major answered in Russian.

Ach so. "You were struck by a car and you are now in a military hospital," the man lied. They were still in Aachen, near the German-Belgian frontier.

"What… I was just coming out to-" The major's voice was that of a drunken man, but it stopped abruptly. His eyes tried to focus properly.

"It is all finished for you, my friend." Now the speaker switched to German. "We know you are a Soviet officer, and you were found in possession of classified government documents. Tell me, what is your interest in Lammersdorf?"

"I have nothing to say," replied "Baum" in German.

"A little late for that," the interrogator chided, switching back to Russian. "But we'll make it easy for you. The surgeon tells us that it is now safe to try a new, ah, medication for you, and you will tell us everything you know. Be serious. No one can resist this form of questioning. You might also wish to consider your position," the man said more harshly. "You are an officer in the army of a foreign government, here in the Federal Republic illegally, traveling with false papers, and in possession of secret documents. At the least, we can imprison you for life. But, given what your government is doing at the moment, we are not concerned with 'least' measures. If you cooperate you will live, and probably be exchanged back to the Soviet Union at a later date for a German agent. We will even say that we got all our information due to the use of drugs; no harm could possibly come to you from this. If you do not cooperate, you will die of injuries received in a motor accident."

"I have a family," Major Andre Chernyavin said quietly, trying to remember his duty. The combination of fear and drug-induced haze made a hash of his emotions. He couldn't tell there was a vial of sodium pentothol dripping into his IV line, and already impairing his higher brain functions. Soon he would be unable to consider the long-term consequences of his action. Only the here and now would matter.

"They will come to no harm," Colonel Weber promised. An Army officer assigned to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, he had interrogated many Soviet agents. "Do you think they punish the family of every spy we catch? Soon no one would ever come here to spy on us at all." Weber allowed his voice to soften. The drugs were beginning to take effect, and as the stranger's mind became hazy he would be gentle, cajoling the information from him. The funny part, he mused, was that he'd been instructed on how to do this by a psychiatrist. Despite the many movies about brutal German interrogators, he hadn't had the least training in a forceful extraction of information. Too bad, he thought. If there was ever a time I need it, it is now. Most of the colonel's family lived outside Kulmbach, only a few kilometers from the border.

"Captain Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov reporting as ordered, Comrade General."

"Be seated, Comrade Captain." The resemblance to his father was remarkable, Alekseyev thought. Short and stocky. The same proud eyes, the same intelligence. Another young man on his way up. "Your father tells me that you are an honor student in Middle East languages."

"This is correct, Comrade General."

"Have you also studied the people who speak them?"

"That is an integral part of the curriculum, Comrade." The younger Sergetov smiled. "We've even had to read through the Koran. It is the only book most of them have ever read, and therefore an important factor in understanding the savages."

"You do not like the Arabs, then?"

"Not particularly. But out country must do business with them. I get along with them well enough. My class will occasionally meet with diplomats from politically acceptable countries to practice our language skills. Mainly Libya, and occasionally people from Yemen and Syria."

"You have three years in tanks. Can we defeat the Arabs in battle?"

"The Israelis have done so with ease, and they don't have a fraction of our resources. The Arab soldier is an illiterate peasant, poorly trained and led by incompetent officers."

A young man with all the answers. And perhaps you will explain Afghanistan to me? Alekseyev thought. "Comrade Captain, you will be attached to my personal staff for the forthcoming operation against the Persian Gulf states. I will lean on you for linguistic work, and to support our intelligence estimates. I understand that you are training to be a diplomat. That is useful to me. I always like to have a second opinion of the intelligence data that KGB and GRU send us. Not that I distrust our comrades in the intelligence arms, you understand. I simply like to have someone who thinks 'Army' to review the data. The fact that you've served in tanks is doubly valuable to me. One more question. How are the reservists reacting to the mobilization?"

"With enthusiasm, of course," the captain replied.

"Ivan Mikhailovich, I presume your father told you about me. I listen attentively to the words of our Party, but soldiers preparing for battle need to know the unvarnished truth so that we can bring about the Party's wishes."

Captain Sergetov noted how carefully that had been phrased. "Our people are angry, Comrade General. They are enraged over the incident in the Kremlin, the murder of the children. I think 'enthusiasm' is not a great exaggeration."

"And you, Ivan Mikhailovich?"

"Comrade General, my father told me that you would ask this question. He told me to assure you that he had no prior knowledge of it, and that the important thing is to safeguard our country so that similar tragedies will never again be necessary."

Alekseyev did not reply at once. He was chilled by the knowledge that Sergetov had read his mind three days before, and dumbfounded that he had confided so enormous a secret to his son. But it was good to know that he had not misread the Politburo man. He was a man to be trusted. Perhaps his son also? Mikhail Eduardovich evidently thought so.

"Comrade Captain, these are things to be forgotten. We have enough to occupy us already. You will work down the hall in room twenty-two. There is work waiting for you. Dismissed."

"It's all a sham," Weber reported to the Chancellor four hours later. The helicopter he'd flown to Bonn hadn't even left the ground yet. "The whole bomb-plot business is all a cruel and deliberate sham."

"We know that, Colonel," the Chancellor replied testily. He'd been awake for two days straight now, trying to come to grips with the sudden German-Russian crisis.

"Herr Kanzler, the man we now have in the hospital is Major Andre Ilych Chernyavin. He entered the country over the Czech border two weeks ago with a separate set of false papers. He is an officer in the Soviet Spetznaz forces, their elite Sturmtruppen. He was badly injured in an auto accident-the fool stepped right in front of an automobile without looking-and was carrying a complete diagram for the NATO communications base at Lammersdorf. The station's security posts were just relocated a month ago. This document is only two weeks old. He also has the watch schedule and a roster of watch officers-and that is only three days old! He and a team of ten men came over the Czech border, and only just got their operational orders. His current orders are to attack the base exactly at midnight, the day after receipt of his alert signal. There is also a cancellation signal should plans change. We have them both."

"He came into Germany long before-" The Chancellor was surprised in spite of himself. The entire affair was so unreal.

"Exactly. It all fits, Herr Kanzler. For whatever reason, Ivan is coming to attack Germany. Everything to this point was a sham, all designed to put us to sleep. Here is a full transcript of our interview with Chernyavin. He has knowledge of four other Spetznaz operations, all of them consistent with a full-scale assault across our borders. He is now at our military hospital in Koblenz under heavy guard. We also have a videotape of his admission."

"What of the chance that this is all some sort of Russian provocation? Why weren't these documents brought over when they crossed the border?"

"The reconstruction of the Lammersdorf installation meant that they needed correct information. As you know, we've been upgrading the security measures at our NATO communications stations since last summer, and our Russian friends must have been updating their assault plans as well. The fact that they have these documents at all-just days old, some of them-is most frightening. As for how we happened to get hold of this man-" Weber explained the circumstances of the accident. "We have every reason to believe that it was a genuine accident, not a provocation. The driver, a Madame Anne-Marie LeCourte, is a fashion agent — she sells dresses for some Paris designer or other; not a likely cover for a Soviet spy. And why do such a thing? Do they expect us to launch an attack into the DDR based on this? First they accuse us of bombing the Kremlin, then try to provoke us? It's not logical. What we have here is a man whose mission is to prepare the way for a Soviet invasion of Germany by paralyzing NATO communication links immediately before hostilities commence."

"But to do such a thing-even if such an attack is planned.

"The Soviets are intoxicated with 'special operations' groups, a lesson from Afghanistan. These men are highly trained, very dangerous. And it's a cunning plan. The Jewish identification, for example. The bastards play on our sensitivity with the Jews, no? If he is stopped by a police officer, he can make a casual remark about how Germans treat Jews, and what would a young policeman do, eh? Probably apologize and send him on his way." Weber smiled grimly. That had been a carefully thought-out touch. He had to admire it. "What they could not allow for was the unexpected. We've been lucky. We should now make use of this luck. Herr Kanzler, this data must go to NATO high command immediately. For the moment we have their safe house under observation. We may wish to assault it. GSG-9 is ready for the mission, but perhaps it should be a NATO operation."

"I must meet with my cabinet first. Then I will speak with the President of the United States on the telephone and the other NATO chiefs of government."

"Forgive me, Chancellor, but there is no time for that. With your permission, within the hour I will give a copy of the videotape to the CIA liaison officer, and also to the British and French. The Russians are going to attack us. Better to alert the intelligence services first, which will lay the groundwork for your talk with the President and others. We must move at once, Herr Kanzler. This is a life-and-death situation."

The Chancellor stared down at his desk. "Agreed, Colonel. What do you propose to do with this Chernyavin?"

Weber had already moved on that score. "He died of injuries sustained in the auto accident. It will appear on the television news this evening, and in the newspapers. Of course he will be made available to our allies for further interrogation. I am certain the CIA and others will wish to see him before midnight."

The Chancellor of the German Federal Republic stared out the windows of his Bonn office. He remembered his armed service forty years before: a frightened teenager with a helmet that nearly covered his eyes. "It's happening again." How many will die this time?

"Ja." Dear God, what will it be like?

The captain looked out over the port side of his ship from the bridge wing. Tugs pushed the last barge onto the aft elevator, then backed away. The elevator rose a few meters, and the barge settled into place on the trolleys already set on the fore-and-aft tracks. JULIUS FUCIK's first officer supervised the loading process from the winch-control station aft, communicating by portable radio to other men scattered about the afterpart of the ship. The elevator matched levels with that of the third cargo deck, and the access door opened to expose the vast cargo deck. Crewmen strung cables onto the trolleys and bolted them rapidly into place.

Winches pulled the barge forward into the third, lowermost, cargo deck of the Seabee-for Seagoing Barge Carner-ship. As soon as the trolleys were over their painted marks, the watertight door closed and lights came on to allow the crew to secure the barge firmly in place. Neatly done, the first officer thought. The whole loading process had been completed in only eleven hours, almost a record. He supervised the process of securing the after-portion of the ship for sea.

"The last barge will be fully secured in thirty minutes," the bosun reported to the first officer, who forwarded the information to the bridge.

Captain Kherov switched buttons on his phone to talk to the engineering spaces. "You will be ready to answer bells in thirty minutes."

"Very well. Thirty minutes." The engineer hung up.

On the bridge, the captain turned to his most senior passenger, a general of paratroops wearing the blue jacket of a ship's officer. "How are your men?"

"Some are seasick already." General Andreyev laughed. They had been brought aboard inside the sealed barges-except for the General, of course-along with tons of military cargo. "Thank you for allowing my men to walk around the lower decks."

"I run a ship, not a prison. Just so they don't tamper with anything."

"They've been told," Andreyev assured him.

"Good. We will have plenty of work for them to do in a few days."

"You know, this is my first trip aboard ship."

"Really? Fear not, Comrade General. It is much safer, and much more comfortable, than flying in an aircraft-and then jumping out of it!" The captain laughed. "He is a big ship and he rides very well even with so light a load."

"Light load?" the General asked. "This is more than half of my division's equipment you have aboard."

"We can carry well over thirty-five thousand metric tons of cargo. Your equipment is bulky, but not that heavy." This was a new thought for the General, who usually had to calculate in terms of moving equipment by air.

Below, over a thousand men of the 234th Guards Air Assault Regiment were milling about under the control of their officers and NCOs. Except for brief periods at night, they'd be stuck down there until the Fucik cleared the English Channel. They tolerated it surprisingly well. Even when crammed with barges and equipment, the cavernous cargo spaces were far larger than the military transport aircraft they were accustomed to. The ship's crew was rigging planks from one barge top to another so that there would be more room for them to use for sleeping, and to get the soldiers off the oily workspaces that the crew needed to patrol. Soon, the regimental officers were to be briefed on shipboard systems, with special attention to the firefighting systems. A strict no-smoking rule was being enforced, but the professional seamen took no chances. The crewmen were surprised at the humble demeanor of the swaggering paratroopers. Even elite troops, they learned, could be cowed by exposure to a new environment. It was a pleasant observation for the merchant seamen.

Three tugs pulled on lines hanging from the ship's side, drawing her slowly away from her dock. Two others joined as soon as she was clear, pushing the bow around to face out to sea from the Leningrad terminal. The General watched the ship's captain control the procedure, as he raced from one bridge wing to another with a junior officer in tow, often giving rudder orders as he passed. Captain Kherov was nearly sixty, and more than two-thirds of his life had been spent at sea.

"Rudder amidships!" he called. "Ahead slow."

The helmsman accomplished both commands in under a second, the General saw. Not bad, he thought, remembering the surly comments he'd heard from time to time about merchant seamen. The captain rejoined him.

"Ah, that's the hardest part behind us."

"But you had help for that," the General observed.

"Some help! Damned tugboats are run by drunks. They damage ships all the time here." The captain walked over to the chart. Good: a deep straight channel all the way to the Baltic. He could relax a bit. The captain walked over to his bridge chair and settled in. "Tea!"

A steward appeared at once with a tray of cups.

"There is no liquor aboard?" Andreyev was surprised.

"Not unless your men brought it, Comrade General. I do not tolerate alcohol on my ship."

"That is true enough." The first officer joined them. "All secure aft. The special sea detail is set. Lookouts posted. The deck inspection is under way."

"Deck inspection?"

"We normally check at the turn of every watch for open hatches, Comrade General," the first officer explained. "With your men aboard, we will check every hour."

"You do not trust my men?" The General was mildly offended.

"Would you trust one of us aboard one of your airplanes?" the captain replied.

"You are right, of course. Please excuse me." Andreyev knew a professional when he saw one. "Can you spare a few men to teach my junior officers and sergeants what they need to know?"

The first officer pulled a set of papers from his pocket. "The classes begin in three hours. In two weeks, your men will be proper seamen."

"We are particularly worried about damage control," the captain said.

"That concerns you?"

"Of course. We stand into danger, Comrade General. I would also like to see what your men can do for ship defense."

The General hadn't thought of that. The operation had been thrown together too quickly for his liking, without the chance to train his men in their shipboard duties. Security considerations. Well, no operation was ever fully planned, was it? "I'll have my antiair commander meet with you as soon as you are ready." He paused. "What sort of damage can this ship absorb and still survive?"

"He is not a warship, Comrade General." Kherov smiled cryptically. "However, you will note that nearly all of our cargo is on steel barges. Those barges have double steel walls, with a meter of space between them, which may even be better than the compartmentalization on a warship. With luck, we will not have to learn. Fire is what concerns me most. The majority of ships lost in battle die from fire. If we can set up an effective firefighting drill, we may well be able to survive at least one, perhaps as many as three missile hits."

The General nodded thoughtfully. "My men will be available to you whenever you wish."

"As soon as we clear the Channel." The captain got up and checked the chart again. "Sorry that we cannot offer you a pleasure cruise. Perhaps the return trip."

The General lifted his tea. "I will toast that, Comrades. My men are at your disposal until the time comes. Success!"

"Yes. Success!" Captain Kherov lifted his cup also, almost wishing for a glass of vodka to toast their enterprise properly. He was ready. Not since his youth in Navy minesweepers had he had the chance to serve the State directly, and he was determined to see this mission through.

"Good evening, Major." In a guarded wing of the military hospital, the chief of CIA's Bonn Station sat down with his British and French counterparts and a pair of translators. "Shall we talk about Lammersdorf?" Unbeknownst to the Germans, the British had a file on Major Chernyavin's activities in Afghanistan, including a poor but recognizable photograph of the man remembered by the Mudjahaddin as the Devil of the Kandahar. General Jean-Pierre de Ville of the French DGSE handled the questioning, since he spoke the best Russian. By this time Chernyavin was a broken man. His only attempt at resistance was killed by listening to a tape of his drug-induced confession. A dead man to his own countrymen, the major repeated what these men already knew but had to hear for themselves. Three hours later, Flash-priority dispatches went to three Western capitals, and representatives of the three security services prepared briefing papers for their counterparts in the other NATO countries.