The Devil's Alternative

WHILE HIGH-RANKING and secret men launched them­selves into a flurry of activity in Washington and Moscow, the old Sanadria thumped her way impassively northeast toward the Dardanelles and Istanbul.

On the second day, Drake watched the bare brown hills of Gallipoli slide by, and the sea dividing European and Asian Turkey widen into the Sea of Marmara. Captain Thanos, who knew these waters like his own backyard on Chios, was doing his own pilotage.

Two Soviet cruisers steamed past them, heading from Se­bastopol out to the Mediterranean to shadow the U.S. Sixth Fleet maneuvers. Just after sundown the twinkling lights of Istanbul and the Galata Bridge spanning the Bosporus came into view. The Sanadria anchored for the night and entered port at Istanbul the following morning.

While the forklift trucks were being unloaded, Andrew Drake secured his passport from Captain Thanos and slipped ashore. He met Miroslav Kaminsky at an agreed rendezvous in central Istanbul and took delivery of a large bundle of sheepskin and suede coats and jackets. When he returned to the ship, Captain Thanos raised an eyebrow.

“You aiming to keep your girl friend warm?” he asked.

Drake shook his head and smiled.

“The crew tell me half the seamen bring these ashore in Odessa,” he said. “I thought it would be the best way to bring my own package.”

The Greek captain was not surprised. He knew half a dozen of his own seamen would be bringing such luggage back to the ship with them, to trade the fashionable coats and blue jeans for five times their buying price to the black-marketeers of Odessa.

Thirty hours later the Sanadria cleared the Bosporus, watched the Golden Horn drop away astern, and chugged north for Bulgaria with her tractors.

Due west of Dublin lies County Kildare, site of the Irish horse-racing center at the Curragh and of the sleepy market town of Celbridge. On the outskirts of Celbridge stands the largest and finest Palladian stately home in the land, Castletown House. With the agreement of the American and So­viet ambassadors, the Irish government had proposed Castletown as the venue for the disarmament conference.

For a week, teams of painters, plasterers, electricians, and gardeners had been at work night and day putting the final touches to the two rooms that would hold the twin confer­ences, though no one knew what the second conference would be for.

The facade of the main house alone is 142 feet wide, and from each corner covered and pillared corridors lead away to further quarters. One of these wing blocks contains the kitchens and staff apartments, and it was here the American security force would be quartered; the other block contains the stables, with more apartments above them, and here the Russian bodyguards would live.

The principal house would act as both conference center and home for the subordinate diplomats, who would inhabit the numerous guest rooms and suites on the top floor. Only the two principal negotiators and their immediate aides would return each night to their respective embassies, equipped as they were with facilities for coded communications with Washington and Moscow.

This time there was to be no secrecy, save in the matter of the secondary conference. Before a blaze of world publicity the two foreign ministers, David Lawrence and Dmitri Rykov, arrived in Dublin and were greeted by the Irish President and Premier. After the habitual televised handshak­ing and toasting, they left Dublin in twin cavalcades for Castletown.

At midday on October 8, the two statesmen and their twenty advisers entered the vast Long Gallery, decorated in Wedg­wood blue in the Pompeian manner and 140 feet long. Most of the center of the hall was taken up with the gleaming Georgian table, down each side of which the delegations seated themselves. Flanking each foreign minister were ex­perts in defense, weapons systems, nuclear technology, inner space, and armored warfare.

The two statesmen knew they were there only to open the conference formally. After the opening and the agreement of agenda, each would fly home to leave the talks in the hands of the delegation leaders, Professor Ivan I. Sokolov for the Soviets and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Edwin J. Campbell for the Americans.

The remaining rooms on this floor were given over to the stenographers, typists, and researchers.

One floor below, at ground level, in the great dining room of Castletown, with drapes drawn to mute the autumn sun­shine pouring onto the southeastern face of the mansion, the secondary conference quietly filed in to take their places. These were mainly technologists: experts in grain, oil, com­puters, and industrial plants.

Upstairs, Dmitri Rykov and David Lawrence each made a short address of welcome to the opposing delegation and expressed the hope and the confidence that the conference would succeed in diminishing the problems of a beleaguered and frightened world. Then they adjourned for lunch.

After lunch Professor Sokolov had a private conference with Rykov before the latter’s departure for Moscow.

“You know our position, Comrade Professor,” said Rykov. “Frankly, it is not a good one. The Americans will go for ev­erything they can get. Your job is to fight every step of the way to minimize our concessions. But we must have that grain. Nevertheless, every concession on arms levels and de­ployment patterns in Eastern Europe must be referred back to Moscow. This is because the Politburo insists on being in­volved in approval or rejection in the sensitive areas.”

He forbore to say that the sensitive areas were those that might impede a future Soviet strike into Western Europe, or that Maxim Rudin’s political career hung by a thread.

In another drawing room at the opposite end of Castletown—a room that, like Rykov’s, had been swept by his own electronics experts for possible “bugs”—David Lawrence was conferring with Edwin Campbell.

“It’s all yours, Ed. This won’t be like Geneva. The Soviet problems won’t permit endless delays, adjournments, and referring back to Moscow for weeks on end. I estimate they have to have an agreement with us within six months. Either that or they don’t get the grain.

“On the other hand, Sokolov will fight every inch of the way. We know each concession on arms will have to be re­ferred to Moscow, but Moscow will have to decide fast one way or the other, or else the time will run out.

“One last thing. We know Maxim Rudin cannot be pushed too far. If he is, he could fall. But if he doesn’t get the wheat, he could fall, too. The trick will be to find the balance; to get the maximum concessions without provoking a revolt in the Politburo.”

Campbell removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had spent four years commuting from Washing­ton to Geneva on the so-far-abortive SALT talks, and he was no newcomer to the problems of trying to negotiate with Rus­sians.

“Hell, David, that sounds fine. But you know how they give nothing of their own inner position away. It would be a hell of a help to know just how far they can be pushed, and where the stop line lies.”

David Lawrence opened his attache case and withdrew a sheaf of papers. He proffered them to Campbell.

“What are these?” asked Campbell.

Lawrence chose his words carefully.

“Nine days ago in Moscow the full Politburo authorized Maxim Rudin and Dmitri Rykov to begin these talks. But only by a vote of seven against six. There’s a dissident faction inside the Politburo that wishes to abort the talks and bring Rudin down. After the agreement the Politburo laid out the exact parameters of what Professor Sokolov could or could not concede, what the Politburo would or would not allow Rudin to grant. Go beyond the parameters and Rudin could be toppled. If that happened, we would have bad, very bad, problems.”

“So what are the papers?” asked Campbell, holding the sheaf in his hands.

“They came in from London last night,” said Lawrence. “They are the verbatim transcript of that Politburo meeting.”

Campbell stared at them in amazement.

“Jesus,” he breathed, “we can dictate our own terms.”

“Not quite,” corrected Lawrence. “We can require the maximum that the moderate faction inside the Politburo can get away with. Insist on more and we could be eating ashes.”

The visit of the British Prime Minister and her Foreign Secre­tary to Washington two days later was described in the press as being informal. Ostensibly, Britain’s first woman premier was to address a major meeting of the English-Speaking Union and take the opportunity of paying a courtesy call on the President of the United States.

But the crux of the latter came in the Oval Office, where President Bill Matthews, flanked by his national security ad­viser, Stanislaw Poklewski, and his Secretary of State, David Lawrence, gave the British visitors an exhaustive briefing on the hopeful start of the Castletown conference. The agenda, reported President Matthews, had been agreed to with un­usual alacrity. At least three main areas for future discussion had been defined between the two teams, with a minimal presence of the usual Soviet objections to every dot and comma.

President Matthews expressed the hope that, after years of frustration, a comprehensive limitation of arms levels and troop deployments along the Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Aegean could well emerge from Castletown.

The crunch came as the meeting between the two heads of government closed.

“We regard it as vital, ma’am, that the inside information of which we are in possession, and without which the confer­ence could well fail, continue to reach us.”

“You mean the Nightingale,” said the British Premier crisply.

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” said Matthews. “We regard it as indis­pensable that the Nightingale continue to operate.”

“I understand your point, Mr. President,” she answered calmly. “But I believe that the hazard levels of that operation are very high. I do not dictate to Sir Nigel Irvine what he shall or shall not do in the running of his service. I have too much respect for his judgment for that. But I will do what I can.”

It was not until the traditional ceremony in front of the principal facade of the White House of seeing the British visi­tors into their limousines and smiling for the cameras was complete that Stanislaw Poklewski could give vent to his feelings.

“There’s no hazard to a Russian agent in the world that compares with the success or failure of the Castletown talks,” he said.

“I agree,” said Bill Matthews, “but I understand from Bob Benson the hazard lies in the exposure of the Nightingale at this point. If that happened, and he were caught, the Polit­buro would learn what had been passed over. If that hap­pened, they would shut off at Castletown. So the Nightingale either has to be silenced or brought out, but neither until we have a treaty sewn up and signed. And that could be six months yet.”

That same evening, while the sun was still shining on Wash­ington, it was setting over the port of Odessa as the Sanadria dropped anchor in the roads. When the clatter of the anchor cable had ceased, silence fell on the freighter, broken only by the low humming of the generators in the engine room and the hiss of escaping steam on deck. Andrew Drake leaned on the fo’c’sle rail, watching the lights of the port and city twinkle into life.

West of the ship, at the northern extremity of the port, lay the oil harbor and refinery, circled by chain-link fencing. To the south, the port was bounded by the protective arm of the great seaward mole. Ten miles beyond the mole the Dniester River flowed into the sea through the swampy marshes where, five months before, Miroslav Kaminsky had stolen his skiff and made a desperate bid for freedom. Now, thanks to him, Andrew Drake—Andriy Drach—had come home to the land of his ancestors. But this time he had come armed.

That evening, Captain Thanos was informed that he would be brought into port and moored alongside the following morning. Port health and customs officials visited the Sanadria, but they spent the hour on board closeted with Captain Thanos in his cabin, sampling his top-grade Scotch whisky, kept for the occasion. There was no search of the ship. Watching the launch leave the ship’s side, Drake wondered if Thanos had betrayed him. It would have been easy enough: Drake would be arrested ashore; Thanos would sail with his five thousand dollars.

It all depended, he thought, on whether Thanos had ac­cepted his story of bringing money to his fiancee. If he had, there was no motive to betray him, for the offense was routine enough; his own sailors brought contraband goods into Odessa on every voyage, and dollar bills were only an­other form of contraband. And if the rifle and pistols had been discovered, the simple thing would have been to throw the lot into the sea and sling Drake off the ship, once back in Piraeus. Still, he could neither eat nor sleep that night.

Just after dawn, the pilot boarded. The Sanadria weighed anchor, took a tug in attendance, and moved slowly between the breakwaters and into her berth. Often, Drake had learned, there was a berthing delay in this, the most congest­ed of the Soviet Union’s warm-water ports. They must want their Vac-U-Vators badly. He had no idea how badly. Once the shore cranes had started to unload the freighter, the watchkeepers among the crew were allowed to go ashore.

During the voyage Drake had become friendly with the Sanadria’s carpenter, a middle-aged Greek seaman who had visited Liverpool and was keen to practice his twenty words of English. He had repeated them continuously to his intense delight whenever he met Drake during the voyage, and each time Drake had nodded furious encouragement and approval. He had explained to Constantino in English and sign lan­guage that he had a girl friend in Odessa and was bringing her presents. Constantino approved. With a dozen others, they trooped down the gangway and headed for the dock gates. Drake was wearing one of his best suede sheepskin coats, although the day was reasonably warm. Constantino carried a duffel shoulder bag with a brace of bottles of export-proof Scotch whisky.

The whole port area of Odessa is cordoned off from the city and its citizens by a high chain fence, topped with barbed wire and arc lights. The main dock gates habitually stand open in the daytime, the entrance being blocked only by a balanced red-and-white striped pole. This marks the pas­sageway for lorries, with a customs official and two armed militiamen attending it.

Astride the entrance gate is a long, narrow shed, with one door inside the port area and one on the outside. The party from the Sanadria entered the first door, with Constantino in charge. There stood a long counter, attended by one customs man, and a passport desk, attended by an immigration officer and a militiaman. All three looked scruffy and exceptionally bored. Constantine approached the customs man and dumped his shoulder bag on the counter. The official opened it and ex­tracted a bottle of whisky. Constantine gestured that it was a present from one to the other. The customs man managed a friendly nod and placed the bottle beneath his table.

Constantine clasped a brawny arm around Drake and pointed to him.

“Droog,” he said, and beamed widely. The customs man nodded that he understood the newcomer was the Greek car­penter’s friend and should be recognized as such. Drake smiled broadly. He stood back, eyeing the customs man as an outfitter eyes a customer. Then he stepped forward, slipped off the sheepskin coat and held it out, indicating that he and the customs man were about the same size. The official did not bother to try it on; it was a fine coat, worth a month’s salary at least. He smiled his acknowledgment, placed the coat under the table, and waved the entire party through.

The immigration officer and militiaman showed no sur­prise. The second bottle of whisky was for the pair of them. The Sanadria crew members surrendered their seaman’s books, and in the case of Drake his passport to the immi­gration officer, and each received in return a shore pass from a leather satchel the officer wore over his shoulder. Within a few minutes the Sanadria party emerged into the sunshine be­yond the shed.

Drake’s rendezvous was in a small cafe in the dockland area of old, cobbled streets, not far from the Pushkin Monu­ment, where the ground rises from the docks to the main city. He found it after thirty minutes of wandering, having sep­arated himself from his fellow seamen on the grounds that he wanted to date his mythical girl friend. Constantino did not object; he had to contact his underworld friends to set up the delivery of his sackful of denim jeans.

It was Lev Mishkin who came, just after noon. He was wary, cautious, and sat alone, making no sign of recognition. When he had finished his coffee, he rose and left the cafe. Drake followed him. Only when the pair had reached the wide, sea-front highway of Primorsky Boulevard did he allow Drake to catch up. They spoke as they walked.

Drake agreed that he would make his first run, with the handguns stuck in his waistband and the image intensifier in a duffel bag with two clinking bottles of whisky, that eve­ning. There would be plenty of Western ships’ crews coming through for an evening in the dockland bars at the same time. He would be wearing another sheepskin coat to cover the handguns in his belt, and the chill of the evening air would justify his keeping the coat buttoned at the front Mishkin and his friend David Lazareff would meet Drake in the darkness by the Pushkin Monument and take over the hardware.

Just after eight that evening, Drake came through with his first consignment. Jovially, he saluted the customs man, who waved him on and called to his colleague at the passport desk. The immigration man handed out a shore pass in ex­change for his passport, jerked his chin toward the open door to the city of Odessa, and Drake was through. He was almost at the foot of the Pushkin Monument, seeing the writer’s head raised against the stars above, when two figures joined him out of the darkness between the plane trees that crowd Odessa’s open spaces.

“Any problems?” asked Lazareff.

“None,” said Drake.

“Let’s get it over with,” said Mishkin. Both men were car­rying the briefcases that everyone seems to carry in the Soviet Union. These cases, far from carrying documents, are the male version of the string bags the women carry, called “per­haps bags.” They get their name from the hope that the women carry with them that perhaps they may spot a worth­while consumer article on sale and snap it up before it is sold out or the queues form. Mishkin took the image intensifier and stuffed it into his larger briefcase; Lazareff took both the handguns, the spare ammunition slips, and the box of rifle shells and put them in his own.

“We’re sailing tomorrow evening,” said Drake. “I’ll have to bring the rifle in the morning.”

“Damn,” said Mishkin, “daylight is bad. David, you know the port area best. Where is it to be?”

Lazareff considered. “There is an alley,” he said, “between two crane-maintenance workshops.”

He described the mud-colored workshops, not far from the docks.

“The alley is short, narrow. One end looks toward the sea, the other to a third blank wall. Enter the seaward end of the alley on the dot of eleven A.M. I will enter the other end. If there is anyone else in the alley, walk on, go around the block, and try again. If the alley is empty, well take de­livery.”

“How will you be carrying it?” asked Mishkin.

“Wrapped around with sheepskin coats,” said Drake, “and stuffed in a kit bag about three feet long.”

“Let’s get out of here,” said Lazareff. “Someone is com­ing.”

When Drake returned to the Sanadria, the customs men had changed shifts and he was frisked. He was clean. The next morning he asked Captain Thanos for an extra spell ashore on the grounds that he wanted to spend the maximum time with his fiancee. Thanos excused him from deck duties and let him go. There was a nasty moment in the customs shed when Drake was asked to turn out his pockets. Placing his kit bag on the ground, he obeyed and revealed a wad of four ten-dollar bills. The customs man, who seemed to be in a bad mood, wagged an admonishing finger at Drake and con­fiscated the dollars. He ignored the kit bag. Sheepskin coats, it seemed, were respectable contraband; dollars were not.

The alley was empty, save for Mishkin and Lazareff walk­ing down from one end and Drake walking up from the other. Mishkin gazed beyond Drake to the seaward end of the alley; when they were abreast he said, “Go,” and Drake hefted the kit bag onto the shoulder of Lazareff. “Good luck,” he said as he walked on, “see you in Israel.”

Sir Nigel Irvine retained membership in three clubs in the west of London, but selected Brooks’s for his dinner with Barry Ferndale and Adam Munro. By custom the serious business of the evening was left until they had quit the dining room and retired to the subscription room, where the coffee, port, and cigars were served.

Sir Nigel had asked the chief steward, called the dispense waiter, to reserve his favorite corner, near the windows look­ing down into St. James’s Street, and four deep leather club chairs were waiting for them when they arrived. Munro selected brandy and water; Ferndale and Sir Nigel took a de­canter of the club’s vintage port and had it set on the table between them. Silence reigned while the cigars were lit, the coffee sipped. From the walls the Dilettantes, the eighteenth-century group of men-about-town, gazed down at them.

“Now, my dear Adam, what seems to be the problem?” asked Sir Nigel at last. Munro glanced to a nearby table where two senior civil servants conversed. For keen ears, they were within eavesdropping distance. Sir Nigel noticed the look.

“Unless we shout,” he observed equably, “no one is going to hear us. Gentlemen do not listen to other gentlemen’s con­versations.”

Munro thought this over.

“We do,” he said simply.

“That’s different,” said Ferndale. “It’s our job.”

“All right,” said Munro. “I want to bring the Nightingale out.”

Sir Nigel studied the tip of his cigar.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Any particular reason?”

“Partly strain,” said Munro. “The original tape recording in July had to be stolen, and a blank substituted in its place. That could be discovered, and it’s preying on the Night­ingale’s mind. Secondly, the chances of discovery. Every ab­straction of Politburo minutes heightens this. We now know Maxim Rudin is fighting for his political life, and the succes­sion when he goes. If the Nightingale gets careless, or is even unlucky, he could get caught.”

“Adam, that’s one of the risks of defecting,” said Ferndale. “It goes with the job. Penkovsky was caught.”

“That’s the point,” pursued Munro. “Penkovsky had pro­vided just about all he could. The Cuban missile crisis was over. There was nothing the Russians could do to undo the damage that Penkovsky had done to them.”

“I would have thought that was a good reason for keeping the Nightingale in place,” observed Sir Nigel. “There is still an awful lot more he can do for us.”

“Or the reverse,” said Munro. “If the Nightingale comes out, the Kremlin can never know what has been passed. If he is caught, they’ll make him talk. What he can reveal now will be enough to bring Rudin down. This would seem to be the moment the West precisely would not wish Rudin to fall.”

“Indeed it is,” said Sir Nigel. “Your point is taken. It’s a question of a balance of chances. If we bring the Nightingale out, the KGB will check back for months. The missing tape will presumably be discovered, and the supposition will be that even more was passed over before he left. If he is caught, it’s even worse; a complete record of what he has passed over will be extracted from him. Rudin could well fall as a result. Even though Vishnayev would probably be dis­graced also, the Castletown talks would abort. Thirdly, we keep the Nightingale in place until the Castletown talks are over and the arms-limitation agreement is signed. By then there will be nothing the war faction in the Politburo can do. It’s a teasing choice.”

“I’d like to bring him out,” said Munro. “Failing that, let him lie low, cease transmitting.”

“I’d like him to go on,” said Ferndale, “at least until the end of Castletown.”

Sir Nigel reflected on the alternative arguments.

“I spent the afternoon with the Prime Minister,” he said at length. “The P.M. made a request, a very strong request, on behalf of herself and the President of the U.S.A. I cannot at this moment turn that request down unless it could be shown the Nightingale was on the very threshold of exposure. The Americans regard it as vital to their chances of securing an all-embracing treaty at Castletown that the Nightingale keep them abreast of the Soviet negotiating position. At least until the New Year.

“So I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Barry, prepare a plan to bring the Nightingale out. Something that can be activated at short notice. Adam, if the fuse begins to burn under the Night­ingale’s tail, we’ll bring him out. Fast. But for the moment the Castletown talks and the frustration of the Vishnayev clique have to take first priority. Three or four more trans­missions should see the Castletown talks in their final stages. The Soviets cannot delay some sort of a wheat agreement be­yond February or March at the latest. After that, Adam, the Nightingale can come to the West, and I’m sure the Ameri­cans will show their gratitude in the habitual manner.”

The dinner in Maxim Rudin’s private suite in the Kremlin’s inner sanctum was far more private than that at Brooks’s in London. No confidence concerning the integrity of gentlemen where other gentlemen’s conversations are concerned has ever marred the acute caution of the men of the Kremlin. There was no one within earshot but the silent Misha when Rudin took his place in his favorite chair of the study and gestured Ivanenko and Petrov to other seats.

“What did you make of today’s meeting?” Rudin asked Pet­rov without preamble. The controller of the Party Organiza­tions of the Soviet Union shrugged.

“We got away with it,” he said. “Rykov’s report was mas­terly. But we still have to make some pretty sweeping conces­sions if we want that wheat And Vishnayev is still after his war.”

Rudin grunted.

“Vishnayev is after my job,” he said bluntly. “That’s his ambition. It’s Kerensky who wants the war. He wants to use his armed forces before he’s too old.”

“Surely it amounts to the same thing,” said Ivanenko. “If Vishnayev can topple you, he will be so beholden to Kerensky he will neither be able, nor particularly wish, to oppose Kerensky’s recipe for a solution to all the Soviet Union’s problems. He will let Kerensky have his war next spring or early summer. Between them they’ll devastate everything it has taken two generations to achieve.”

“What is the news from your debriefing yesterday?” asked Rudin. He knew Ivanenko had recalled two of his most sen­ior men from the Third World for consultations face-to-face. One was the controller of all subversive operations through­out Africa, the other his counterpart for the Middle East.

“Optimistic,” said Ivanenko. “The capitalists have screwed up their African policies for so long now, their position is vir­tually irrecoverable. The liberals rule still in Washington and London, at least in foreign affairs. They are so totally ab­sorbed with South Africa, they don’t seem to notice Nigeria and Kenya at all. Both are on the verge of falling to us. The French in Senegal are proving more difficult. In the Middle East, I think we can count on Saudi Arabia’s falling within three years. They’re almost encircled.”

“Time scale?” asked Rudin.

“Within a few years—say, by 1990 at the outside—we shall effectively control the oil and the sea routes. The euphoria campaign in Washington and London is being steadily increased, and it is working.”

Rudin exhaled his smoke and stubbed the tube of his ciga­rette into an ashtray proffered by Misha.

“I won’t see it,” he said, “but you two will. Inside a decade the West will die of malnutrition, and we won’t have to fire a shot. All the more reason why Vishnayev must be stopped while there is still time.”

Four kilometers southwest of the Kremlin, inside a tight loop in the Moscow River and not far from the Lenin Stadium, stands the ancient monastery of Novodevichi. Its main en­trance is right across the street from the principal Beriozka shop, where the rich and privileged, or foreigners, may buy for hard currency luxuries unobtainable by the common people.

The monastery grounds contain three lakes and a ceme­tery, and access to the cemetery is available to pedestrians. The gatekeeper will seldom bother to stop those bearing bunches of flowers.

Adam Munro parked his car In the Beriozka parking lot, among others whose number plates revealed them to belong to the privileged.

“Where do you hide a tree?” his instructor used to ask the class. “In a forest. And where do you bide a pebble? On the beach. Always keep it natural.”

Munro crossed the road, traversed the cemetery with his bunch of carnations, and found Valentina waiting for him by one of the smaller lakes. Late October had brought the first bitter winds off the steppes to the east, and gray, scudding clouds across the sky. The surface of the water rippled and shivered in the wind.

“I asked them in London,” he said gently. “They told me it is too risky at the moment. Their answer was that to bring you out now would reveal the missing tape, and thus the fact of the transcripts having been passed over. They feel if that happened, the Politburo would withdraw from the talks in Ireland and revert to the Vishnayev plan.”

She shivered slightly, whether from the chill of the lakeside or from fear of her own masters he could not tell. He put an arm around her and held her to him.

“They may be right,” she said quietly. “At least the Politburo is negotiating for food and peace, not preparing for war.”

“Rudin and his group seem to be sincere in that,” he sug­gested.

She snorted.

“They are as bad as the others,” she said. “Without the pressure they would not be there at all.”

“Well, the pressure is on,” said Munro. “The grain is com­ing in. They know the alternatives now. I think the world will get its peace treaty.”

“If it does, what I have done will have been worthwhile,” said Valentina. “I don’t want Sasha to grow up among the rubble as I did, nor live with a gun in his hand. That is what they would have for him, up there in the Kremlin.”

“He won’t,” said Munro. “Believe me, my darling, he’ll grow up in freedom, in the West, with you as his mother and me as his stepfather. My principals have agreed to bring you out in the spring.”

She looked up at him with hope shining in her eyes.

“In the spring? Oh, Adam, when in the spring?”

“The talks cannot go on for too long. The Kremlin needs its grain by April at the latest, The last of the supplies and all the reserves will have run out by then. When the treaty is agreed upon, perhaps even before it is signed, you and Sasha will be brought out. Meanwhile, I want you to cut down on the risks you are taking. Only bring out the most vital material concerning the peace talks at Castletown.”

“There’s one in here,” she said, nudging the bag over her shoulder. “It’s from ten days ago. Most of it is so technical I can’t understand it. It refers to permissible reductions of mo­bile SS-Twenties.”

Munro nodded grimly.

“Tactical rockets with nuclear warheads, highly accurate and highly mobile, borne on the backs of tracked vehicles and parked in groves of trees and under netting all across Eastern Europe.”

Twenty-four hours later, the package was on its way to London.

Three days before the end of the month, an old lady was heading down Sverdlov Street in central Kiev toward her apartment block. Though she was entitled to a car and a chauffeur, she had been born and brought up in the country, of strong peasant stock. Even in her mid-seventies she pre­ferred to walk rather than drive for short distances. Her visit to spend the evening with a friend two blocks away was so short she had dismissed the car and chauffeur for the night. It was just after ten when she crossed the road in the direction of her own front door.

She didn’t see the car, it came so fast. One minute she was in the middle of the road with no one about but two pedestri­ans a hundred yards away; the next, the vehicle was on her, lights blazing, tires squealing. She froze. The driver seemed to steer right at her, then swerved away. The wing of the vehicle crashed into her hip, bowling her over in the gutter. It failed to stop, roaring away toward Kreshchatik Boulevard at the end of the Sverdlov. She vaguely heard the crunch of feet running toward her as passersby came to her aid.

That evening, Edwin J. Campbell, the chief U.S. negotiator at the Castletown talks, arrived back, tired and frustrated, at the ambassadorial residence in Phoenix Park. It was an elegant mansion that America provided its envoy in Dublin, and fully modernized, with handsome guest suites, the finest of which Edwin Campbell had taken over. He was looking forward to a long, hot bath and a rest.

When he had dropped his coat and responded to his host’s greeting, one of the messengers from the embassy handed him a fat manila envelope. As a result his sleep was curtailed that night, but it was worth it.

The next day, he took his place in the Long Gallery at Castletown and gazed impassively across the table at Profes­sor Ivan I. Sokolov.

All right, Professor, he thought, I know what you can concede and what you cannot. So let’s get on with it.

It took forty-eight hours for the Soviet delegate to agree to cut the Warsaw Pact presence of tracked tactical nuclear rockets in Eastern Europe by half. Six hours later, in the din­ing room, a protocol was agreed whereby the United States would sell the USSR $200 million worth of oil-drilling and -extraction technology at bargain-basement prices.

The old lady was unconscious when the ambulance brought her to the general hospital of Kiev, the October Hospital at 39 Karl Liebknecht Street. She remained so until the following morning. When she was able to explain who she was, panicked officials had her wheeled out of the general ward and into a private room, which rapidly filled with flowers. During that day the finest orthopedic surgeon in Kiev oper­ated to set her broken femur.

In Moscow, Ivanenko took a call from his personal aide and listened intently.

“I understand,” he said without hesitation. “Inform the au­thorities that I shall come at once. What? Well, then, when she has come out of the anesthetic. Tomorrow night? Very well, arrange it.”

It was bitter cold on the evening of the last night of October. There was no one moving in Rosa Luxemburg Street, onto which the October Hospital backs. The two long black lim­ousines stood unobserved at the curb by this back entrance which the KGB chief had chosen to use rather than the grand portico at the front.

The whole area stands on a slight rise of ground, amid trees, and farther down the street, on the opposite side, an annex to the hospital was under construction, its unfinished upper levels jutting above the greenery. The watchers among the frozen cement sacks rubbed their hands to keep the circu­lation going, and stared at the two cars by the door, dimly il­luminated by a single bulb above the archway.

When he came down the stairs, the man with seven sec­onds to live was wearing a long, fur-collared overcoat and thick gloves, even for the short walk across the pavement to the warmth of the waiting car. He had spent two hours with his mother, comforting her and assuring her the culprits would be found, as the abandoned car had been found.

He was preceded by an aide, who ran ahead and flicked off the doorway light. The door and the pavement were plunged into darkness. Only then did Ivanenko advance to the door, held open by one of his six bodyguards, and pass through it. The knot of four others outside parted as his fur-coated fig­ure emerged, merely a shadow among shadows.

He advanced quickly to the Zil, engine running, across the pavement. He paused for a second as the passenger door was swung open, and died, the bullet from the hunting rifle skew­ering through his forehead, splintering the parietal bone and exiting through the rear of the cranium to lodge in an aide’s shoulder.

The crack of the rifle, the whack of the impacting bullet, and the first cry from Colonel Yevgeni Kukushkin, his senior bodyguard, took less than a second. Before the slumping man had hit the pavement, the plainclothes colonel had him under the armpits, dragging him into the recesses- of the rear seat of the Zil. Before the door was closed, the colonel was scream­ing, “Drive! Drive!” to the shocked driver.

Colonel Kukushkin pillowed the bleeding head in his lap as the Zil screeched away from the curb. He thought fast. It was not merely a question of a hospital, but of which hospital for a man like this. As the Zil cleared the end of Rosa Luxem­burg Street, the colonel flicked on the interior light. What he saw—and he had seen much in his career—was enough to tell him his master was beyond hospitals. His second reac­tion was programmed into his mind and his job : no one must know. The unthinkable had happened, and no one must know, save only those entitled to know. He had secured his promotion and his job by his presence of mind. Watching the second limousine, the bodyguards’ Chaika, swing out of Rosa Luxemburg Street behind them, he ordered the driver to choose a quiet and darkened street not less than two miles away, and park.

Leaving the curtained and motionless Zil at the curb, with the bodyguards scattered in a screen around it, he took off his blood-soaked coat and set off on foot. He finally made his phone call from a militia barracks, where his I.D. card and rank secured him instant access to the commandant’s private office and phone. It also secured him a direct line. He was patched through in fifteen minutes.

“I must speak to Comrade Secretary-General Rudin ur­gently,” he told the Kremlin switchboard operator. The woman knew from the line on which the call was coming that this was neither joke nor impertinence. She put it through to an aide inside the Armory Building, who held the call and spoke to Maxim Rudin on the internal phone. Rudin authorized the transfer of the call.

“Yes,” he grunted on the line, “Rudin here.”

Colonel Kukushkin had never spoken to him before, though he had seen him and heard him at close quarters many times. He knew it was Rudin. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and spoke.

At the other end, Rudin listened, asked two brief questions, rapped out a string of orders, and put the phone down. He turned to Vassili Petrov, who was with him, leaning forward, alert and worried.

“He’s dead,” said Rudin in disbelief. “Not a heart attack. Shot. Yuri Ivanenko. Someone has just assassinated the chair­man of the KGB.”

Beyond the windows the clock in the tower above Savior Gate chimed midnight, and a sleeping world began to move slowly toward war.