The Sum of All Fears

31 DANCERS

Ryan knew it was too late when the traffic woke him up and he saw that the windows were flooded with light. A look at his watch showed eight-fifteen. That almost set off a panic attack, but it was too late to panic, wasn't it? Jack rose from the bed and walked into the sitting room to see his wife already working on her morning coffee.

“Don't you have to work today?”

“I was supposed to assist with a procedure that started a few minutes ago, but Bernie is covering for me. I think you ought to put some clothes on, though.”

“How do I get to work?”

“John'll be here at nine.”

“Right.” Ryan walked off to shower and shave. On the way, he looked in the closet and noted that a suit, shirt, and tie were waiting for him. His wife had certainly planned this one carefully. He had to smile. Jack had never thought of his wife as a master — mistress? — of conspiracy. By eight-forty, he was washed and shaved.

“You know I have an appointment right across the street at eleven.”

“No, I didn't. Say hi to that Elliot bitch for me.” Cathy smiled.

“You don't like her, either?” he asked.

“Not much there to like. She was a crummy college teacher. She's not as smart as she thinks. Major ego problems.”

“I've noticed. She doesn't like me very much.”

“I did get that impression. We had a little fight yesterday. I think I won,” Cathy observed.

“What was it all about anyway?”

“Oh, just a girl-to-girl thing.” Cathy paused. “Jack…?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“I think it's time for you to leave.”

Ryan examined his breakfast plate. “I think you may be right. I have a couple more things to do… but when they're done…”

“How long?” she asked.

“Two months at the outside. I can't just leave, babe. I'm a presidential appointee. I had to be confirmed by the Senate, remember? You can't just walk away from that — it's like desertion if you do. There are rules you have to follow.”

Cathy nodded. She'd won her point already. “I understand, Jack. Two months is good enough. What would you like to do?”

“I could get a research job almost anywhere, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Heritage, maybe the Johns Hopkins Center for Advanced International Studies. I had this talk in England with Basil. When you get to my level, you're never really gone. Hmph. I might even write another book…”

“We'll start off with a nice long vacation, soon as the kids are out of school.”

“I thought…?”

“I won't be too pregnant then, Jack.”

“You really think it happened last night?”

Her eyes arched wickedly. The timing was just about right, and you had two chances, didn't you? What's the matter? You feel used?"

Her husband smiled. “I've been used worse.”

“See me tonight?”

“Did I ever tell you how much I like that nightie?”

“My wedding dress? It's a little formal, but it did have the desired effect. Shame we don't have more time now, isn't it?”

Jack decided he'd better get out of here while he still could. “Yeah, babe, but I have work to do, and so do you.”

“Awww,” Cathy observed playfully.

“I can't tell the President that I was late because I was boffing my wife across the street.” Jack came to his wife and kissed her. “Thanks, honey.”

“A pleasure, Jack.”

Ryan emerged from the front door to see Clark waiting in the drive-through. He got right in.

“Morning, doc.”

“Hi, John. You only made one mistake.”

“What's that?”

“Cathy knew your name. How?”

“You don't need to know,” Clark replied, handing over the dispatch box. “Hell, sometimes I like to sack in myself, y'know?”

“I'm sure you broke some kind of law.”

“Yeah, right.” Clark headed out. “When do we get the go-ahead on the Mexico job?”

“That's what I'm going into the White House for.”

“Eleven?”

“Right.”

It was gratifying to see that the CIA could in fact operate without his presence. Ryan arrived on the seventh floor to see that everyone was at work. Even Marcus was where he belonged.

“Ready for your trip?” Jack asked the Director.

“Yeah, heading off tonight. Station Japan is setting up the meet with Lyalin.”

“Marcus, please remember that he is Agent M USHASHI, and his information is NIITAKA. Using his real name, even here, is a bad habit to get into.”

“Yeah, Jack. You're heading down to see the President soon for the Mexico thing?”

“That's right.”

“I like the way you set that thing up.”

“Thanks, Marcus, but the credit goes to Clark and Chavez. Open to a suggestion?” Jack asked.

“Go ahead.”

“Put them back in Operations?”

“If they bring this one off, the President will go along with it. So will I.”

“Fair enough.” That was pretty easy, Jack thought. He wondered why.

Dr. Kaminiskiy went over the films and swore at himself for his error of the previous day. It hardly seemed possible, but—

But it wasn't possible. Not here. Was it? He had to run some additional tests, but first he spent an hour tracking down his Syrian colleague. The patient was moved to another hospital, one with a laminar room. Even if Kaminiskiy were wrong, this man had to be totally isolated.

Russell fired up the forklift and took several minutes to figure out the controls. He wondered what the previous owner had needed with one, but there was no point in that. There was enough remaining pressure in the propane tanks that he didn't have to worry about that either. He walked back to the house.

The people here in Colorado were friendly enough. Already, the local newspaper distributors had set up the delivery boxes at the end of the drive. Russell had the morning paper to read with his coffee. A moment later, he realized how good a thing that was.

“Uh-oh,” he observed quietly.

“What is the problem, Marvin?”

“I've never seen this before. The Vikings fans are planning a convoy… over a thousand cars and buses. Damn,” he noted. “That”ll screw the roads up…" He turned to see the extended weather forecast.

“What do you mean?”

“They have to come down I-76 to get to Denver. That might mess things up some. We want to arrive about noon, maybe a little later… about the same time the convoy is supposed to arrive…”

“Convoy — what do you mean? Convoy defending against what?” Qati asked.

“Not a real convoy,” Russell explained. “More like a, uh, a motorcade. The fans from Minnesota have a big deal laid on. Tell you what, let's get a motel room for us. One close to the airport. When's our flight?” He paused, “Jesus, I really haven't been thinking very clear, have I?”

“What do you mean?” Ghosn asked again.

“Weather,” Russell replied. “This is Colorado, and it is January. What if we get another snowstorm?” He scanned the page. Uh-oh…

“For driving, you mean?”

“That's right. Look, what we ought to do is get rooms reserved, one of the motels right by the airport, say. We can go down the night before… or I'll get the rooms for two — no, three nights, so there won't be any suspicion. Christ, I hope there's vacancies.” Russell walked to the phone and flipped open the Yellow Pages right next to it. It took him four tries to find a room with twin doubles in a little independent place a mile from the airport. This he had to guarantee with a credit card that he'd managed not to use until now. He didn't like having to do that. One more bit of paper for his trail.

“Good morning, Liz.” Ryan walked into the office and sat down. “How are you today?”

The National Security Advisor didn't like being baited any more than the next person. She'd had a little battle with this bastard's wife — in front of reporters! — and taken her lumps publicly. Whether Ryan had had anything to do with it or not, he must have had a good laugh about it last night. Worse than that, what that skinny little bitch had said also went after Bob Fowler, didn't it? The President had thought so on being told last night.

“You ready for the brief?”

“Sure am.”

“Come on.” She'd let Bob handle this.

Helen D'Agustino watched the two officials enter the Oval Office. She'd heard the story, of course. A Secret Service agent had heard the whole thing, and the vicious putdown administered to Dr. Elliot had already been the subject of a few discreet chuckles.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” she heard Ryan say, as the door closed.

“Morning, Ryan. Okay, let's hear it.”

“Sir, what we plan to do is actually fairly simple. Two CIA officers will be in Mexico, at the airport, covered as airline maintenance personnel. They'll do the normal stuff, emptying ashtrays, cleaning the johns. Before they leave they will place fresh flower arrangements in the upstairs lounge. Concealed in the arrangements will be microphones like this one.” Ryan pulled the plastic spike from his pocket and handed it over. These will transmit what they pick up to a second transmitter, concealed in a bottle. That device will broadcast a multi-channel EHF — that's extremely high frequency — signal out of the aircraft. A series of three other aircraft will fly parallel courses with the 747 to receive that signal. An additional receiver with a tape-recorder attached will be concealed on the 747, both as a backup to the air-to-air links and as a cover for the operation. If it's located, the bugs will seem to be something done by the news people accompanying the Prime Minister. We don't expect that, of course. We'll have people at Dulles to recover our gadgets. In either case, the electronic transmission will be processed and the transcripts presented to you a few hours after the aircraft lands."

“Very well. What are the chances for success?” Chief of Staff Arnold van Damm asked. He had to be there, of course. This was more an exercise in politics than statecraft. The downside political risk was serious, just as the reward for success would be more than noteworthy.

“Sir, there are no guarantees for operations of this kind. If something is said, it is likely that we'll know what it is, but he might not even discuss the matter at all. The equipment has all been tested. It works. The field officer running this operation is well experienced. He's done touchy ones before.”

“Like?” van Damm asked.

“Like getting Gerasimov's wife and daughter out a few years ago.” Ryan explained on for a minute or so.

“Is the operation worth the risk?” Fowler asked.

That surprised Ryan quite a bit. “Sir, that decision is yours to make.”

“But I asked you for an opinion.”

“Yes, Mr. President, it is. The take we've been getting from NIITAKA shows a considerable degree of arrogance on their part. Something like this might have the net effect of shocking them into playing honest ball with us.”

“You approve of our policy of dealing with Japan?” van Damm asked, just as surprised as Ryan had been a moment earlier.

“My approval or disapproval is beside the point, but the answer to your question is, yes.”

The Chief of Staff was openly amazed. “But the previous administration — how come you never told us?”

“You never asked, Arnie. I don't make government policy, remember? I'm a spook. I do what you tell me to do, as long as it's legal.”

“You're satisfied on the legality of the operation?” Fowler asked, with a barely suppressed smile.

“Mr. President, you're the lawyer, not me. If I do not know the legal technicalities — and I don't — I must assume that you, as an officer of the court, are not ordering me to break the law.”

“That's the best dance number I've seen since the Kirov Ballet was in the Kennedy Center last summer,” van Damm observed, with a laugh.

“Ryan, you know all the moves. You have my approval,” Fowler said, after a brief pause. “If we get what we expect, then what?”

“We have to go over that with the State Department guys,” Liz Elliot announced.

“That is potentially dangerous,” Ryan observed. “The Japanese have been hiring a lot of the people from the trade-negotiation section. We have to assume that they have people inside.”

“Commercial espionage?” Fowler asked.

“Sure, why not? NIITAKA has never given us hard evidence of that, but if I were a bureaucrat looking to leave government service and make half a mill' a year representing them — like a lot of them do — how would I present myself to them as a potentially valuable asset? I'd do it the same way a Soviet official or spook presents bonafides to us. You deliver something juicy up-front. That's illegal, but we're not devoting any assets to looking at the problem. For that reason, wide dissemination of the information from this operation is very dangerous. Obviously you'll want the opinion of Secretary Talbot and a few others, but I'd be really careful how much farther you spread it. Also, remember that if you tell the PM that you know what he said — and if he knows he only said it in one place — you run the risk of compromising this intelligence-gathering technique.” The President accepted that without anything more than a raised eyebrow.

“Make it look like a leak in Mexico?” van Damm asked.

“That's the obvious ploy,” Ryan agreed.

“And if I confront him with it directly?” Fowler asked.

“Kind of hard to beat a straight flush, Mr. President. And if this were ever to leak, Congress would go ballistic. That's one of my problems. I'm required to discuss this operation with Al Trent and Sam Fellows. Sam will play ball, but Al has political reasons to dislike the Japanese.”

“I could order you not to tell him…”

“Sir, that's one law I may not break for any reason.”

“I might have to give you that order,” Fowler observed.

Ryan was surprised again. Both he and the President knew what the consequences of that order would be. Just what Cathy had in mind. It might, in fact, be a fine excuse to leave government service.

“Well, maybe that won't be necessary. I'm tired of playing patty-cake with these people. They made an agreement, and they're going to keep it or have to deal with a very irate President. Worse than that, the idea that someone can suborn the President of a country in so venal a way is contemptible. God damn it! I hate corruption.”

“Right on, boss,” van Damm commented. “Besides, the voters will like it.”

“That bastard,” Fowler went on, after a moment. Ryan couldn't tell how much of this was real and how much feigned. “He tells me he's coming over to work out a few details, get acquainted some more, and what he's really planning is to welsh on a deal. Well, we'll see about that. I guess it's time he learned about hardball.” The discourse stopped. “Ryan, I missed you last night.”

“My wife got a headache, sir. Had to leave. Sorry.”

“Feeling all right now?”

“Yes, sir, thank you.”

“Turn your people loose.”

Ryan stood. “Will do, Mr. President.”

Van Damm followed him out and walked him to the West Entrance. “Nice job, Jack.”

“Gee, they going to start liking me?” Jack asked wryly. The meeting had gone much too well.

“I don't know what happened last night, but Liz is really pissed at your wife.”

“They talked about something, but I don't know what.”

“Jack, you want it straight?” van Damm asked.

Ryan knew that the friendly walk to the door was just too convenient, and the symbolism was explicit enough, wasn't it? “When, Arnie?”

“I'd like to say it's just business and not personal, but it is personal. I'm sorry, Jack, but it happens. The President will give you a glowing sendoff.”

“Nice of him,” Jack replied matter-of-factly.

“I tried, Jack. You know I like you. These things happen.”

“I'll go quietly. But—”

“I know. No back-shots on the way out or after you're gone. You'll be asked in periodically, maybe draw some special missions, liaison stuff. You get an honorable discharge. On that, Jack, you have my word of honor, and the President's. He's not a bad guy, Jack, really he isn't. He's a tough-minded son-of-a-bitch and a good politician, but he's as honest as any man I know. It's just that your way of thinking and his way of thinking are different — and he's the President.”

Jack could have said that the mark of intellectual honesty is the solicitation of opposing points of view. Instead, he said, “Like I said, I'll go quietly. I've been doing this long enough. It's time to relax a little, smell the roses and play with the kids.”

“Good man.” Van Damm patted his arm. “You bring this job off and your going-away statement from the Boss will sparkle. We'll have Callie Weston write it, even.”

“You stroke like a pro, Arnie.” Ryan shook his hand and walked off to his car. Van Damm would have been surprised to see the smile on his face.

“Do you have to do it that way?”

“ Elizabeth, ideological differences notwithstanding, he has served his country well. I disagree with him on a lot of things, but he's never lied to me, and he's always tried to give me good advice,” Fowler replied, looking at the plastic-stick microphone. He suddenly wondered if it was working.

“I told you what happened last night.”

“You got your wish. He's on the way out. At this level, you do not throw people out the door. You do it in a civilized and honorable way. Anything else is small-minded and decidedly stupid, politically. I agree with you that he's a dinosaur, but even dinosaurs get a nice spot in the museums.”

“But—”

“That's all. Okay, you had words with his wife last night. I'm sorry about that, but what kind of person penalizes someone for what their wife did?”

“Bob, I have a right to expect your support!”

Fowler didn't like that, but responded reasonably. “And you have it, Elizabeth. Now, this is neither the time nor the place for this sort of discussion.”

Marcus Cabot arrived at Andrews Air Force Base just after lunch for his flight to Korea. The arrangements were more luxurious than they looked. The aircraft was a U.S. Air Force C-141B Starlifter, an aircraft with four engines and an oddly serpentlike fuselage. Loaded into the cargo area, he saw, was essentially a house trailer complete with kitchen, living and bed rooms. It was also heavily insulated — the C-141 is a noisy aircraft, especially aft. He went out the front door to meet the flight crew. The pilot, he saw, was a blond captain of thirty years. There were, in fact, two complete flight crews. The flight would be long, with a fueling stop at Travis Air Force Base in California, followed by three midair “tankings” over the Pacific. It would also be singularly boring, and he would sleep through it as much as possible. He wondered if government service were really worth it, and the knowledge that Ryan would soon be gone — Arnold van Damm had gotten the word to him — didn't improve his outlook. The Director of Central Intelligence strapped himself in and started to read through his briefing documents. An Air Force non-com offered him a glass of wine, which he started on as the aircraft taxied off the ramp.

John Clark and Domingo Chavez boarded their own flight later that afternoon for Mexico City. It was better, the senior man thought, to get settled in and acclimated. Mexico City was yet another high-altitude metropolis whose thin air was made all the worse by air pollution. Their mission gear was carefully packed away, and they expected no trouble with customs clearance. Neither carried a weapon, of course, as this sort of mission did not require it.

The truck pulled off the Interstate exactly thirty-eight hours and forty minutes after leaving the cargo terminal at Norfolk. That was the easy part. It took fifteen minutes and all the driver's skill to back his rig up to the concrete loading dock outside the barn. A warm sun had thawed the ground into a six-inch-deep layer of gooey mud that almost prevented him from completing the maneuver, but on the third try he made it. The driver jumped down and walked back towards the dock.

“How do you open this thing?” Russell asked.

“I'll show you.” The driver paused to scrape the mud off his boots, then worked the latch on the container. “Need help unloading?”

“No, I'll do it myself. There's coffee over in the house.”

“Thank you, sir. I could use a cup.”

“Well, that was easy enough,” Russell said to Qati, as they watched the man go away. Marvin opened the doors and saw a single large box with Sony printed on all four sides, along with arrows to show which side was up, and the image of a champagne glass to tell the illiterate it was delicate. It was also sitting on a wooden pallet. Marvin removed the fasteners that held it in place, then fired up the fork-lift. The task of removing the bomb and putting it inside the barn was completed in another minute. Russell shut the fork-lift down, then draped a tarp over the box. By the time the trucker came back, the cargo box was again closed.

“Well, you got your bonus,” Marvin told him, handing over the cash.

The driver riffled through the bills. Now he got to drive the box back to Norfolk, but first he'd hit the nearest truck-stop for eight hours of sleep. “A pleasure doing business with you, sir. You said you might have another job for me in a month or so?”

“That's right.”

“Here's how you reach me.” The trucker handed over his card.

“Heading right back?”

“After I get some sack time. I just heard on the radio there's snow coming tomorrow night. A big one, they say.”

“That time of year, isn't it?”

“Sure is. You have a good one, sir.”

“Be careful, man,” Russell said, shaking his hand one more time.

“It's a mistake to let him go,” Ghosn observed to the Commander in Arabic.

“I think not. The only face he has really seen is Marvin's, after all.”

“True.”

“Have you checked it?” Qati asked.

There is no damage to the packing box. I will do a more detailed check tomorrow. I would say that we are almost ready."

“Yes.”

“You want the good news or the bad news?” Jack asked.

“Good first,” Cathy said.

“They're asking me to resign my position.”

“What's the bad news?”

“Well, you never really leave. They'll want me to come back occasionally. To consult, stuff like that.”

“Is that what you want?”

“This work does get in your blood, Cathy. Would you like to leave Hopkins and just be a doc with an office and patients and glasses to prescribe?”

“How much?”

“Couple times a year, probably. Special areas I happen to know a lot about. Nothing regular.”

“Okay, that's fair — and, no, I couldn't give up teaching young docs. How soon?”

“Well, I have two things I have to finish up with. Then we have to pick someone for the job…” How about the Foleys, Jack thought. But which one…?

“ Conn, sonar.”

“Conn, aye,” the navigator answered.

“Sir, I got a possible contact bearing two-nine-five, very faint, but it keeps coming back.”

“On the way.” It was a short five steps into the sonar room. “Show me.”

“Right here, sir.” The sonarman pointed to a line on the display. Though it looked fuzzy, it was in fact composed of discrete yellow dots in a specific frequency range, and as the time-scale moved vertically upward, more dots kept appearing, regular only in that they seemed to form a vague and fuzzy line. The only change in the line was a slight drift in direction. “I can't tell you what it is yet.”

“Tell me what it isn't.”

“It ain't no surface contact, and I don't think it's random noise either, sir.” The petty officer traced it all the way to the top of the tube with a grease pencil. “Right about here, I decided it might actually be something.”

“What else you got?”

“Sierra-15 over here is a merchant, heading southeast and way the hell away from us — that's a third-CZ contact we been trackin' since before turn of the last watch, and that's about it, Mr. Pitney. I guess it's too bumpy topside for the fishermen to be out this far.”

Lieutenant Pitney tapped the screen. “Call it Sierra-16, and I'll get a track started. How's the water?”

“Deep channel seems very good today, sir. Surface noise is a little tough, though. This one's tough to hold.”

“Keep an eye on it.”

“Aye aye.” The sonarman turned back to his scope.

Lieutenant Jeff Pitney returned to the control room, lifted the growler phone, and punched the button for the Captain's cabin. “Gator here, Cap'n. We have a possible sonar contact bearing two-nine-five, very faint. Our friend might be back, sir… Yes, sir.” Pitney hung up and hit the 1-MC speaker system. “Man the fire-control tracking party.”

Captain Ricks appeared a minute later, wearing sneakers and his blue overalls. His first stop was to control, to check course, speed, and depth. Then he went into sonar.

“Let's see it.”

“Damn thing just faded on me again, sir,” the sonarman said sheepishly. He used a piece of toilet paper — there was a roll over each scope — to erase the previous mark, and penciled in another. “I think we have something here, sir.”

“I hope you didn't interrupt my sleep for nothing,” Ricks noted. Lieutenant Pitney caught the look the two other sonarmen exchanged at that.

“Coming back, sir. You know, if this is an Akula, we should be getting a little pump noise in this spectrum over here…”

“Intelligence says he's coming out of overhaul. Ivan is learning how to make them quieter,” Ricks said.

“Guess so… slow drift to the north, call the current bearing two-nine-seven.” Both men knew that figure could be off by ten degrees either way. Even with the enormously expensive system on Maine, really longdistance bearings were pretty vague.

“Anybody else around?” Pitney asked.

“ Omaha is supposed to be around somewhere south of Kodiak. Wrong direction. It's not her. Sure it's not a surface contact?”

“No way, Cap'n. If it was diesel, I'd know it, and if it was steam, I'd know that, too. There's no pounding from surface noise. Has to be a submerged contact, Cap'n. Only thing makes sense.”

“Pitney, we're on two-eight-one?”

“Yessir.”

“Come left to two-six-five. We'll set up a better baseline for the target-motion analysis, try to get a range estimate before we turn in.”

Turn in, Pitney thought. Jesus, boomers aren't supposed to do this stuff. He gave the order anyway, of course.

“Where's the layer?”

“One-five-zero feet, sir. Judging by the surface noise, there's twenty-five-footers up there,” the sonarman added.

“So he's probably staying deep to smooth the ride out.”

“Damn, lost him again… we'll see what happens when the tail straightens back out… ”

Ricks leaned his head out of the sonar room and spoke a single word: “Coffee.” It never occurred to him that the sonarmen might like some, too.

It took five more minutes of waiting before the dots started appearing again in the right place.

“Okay, he's back. I think,” the sonarman added. “Bearing looks like three-zero-two now.”

Ricks walked out to the plotting table. Ensign Shaw was doing his calculations along with a quartermaster. “Has to be a hundred-thousand-plus yards. I'm assuming a north-easterly course from the bearing drift, speed of less than ten. Has to be a hundred-K yards or more.” That was good, fast work, Shaw and the petty officer thought.

Ricks nodded curtly and went back to sonar.

“Firming up, getting some stuff on the fifty-herz line now. Starting to smell like Mr. Akula, maybe.”

“You must have a pretty good channel.”

“Right, Captain, pretty good and improving a little. That storm's gonna change it when the turbulence gets down to our depth, sir.”

Ricks went into control again: “Mr. Shaw?”

“Best estimate is one-one-five-K yards, course northeasterly, speed five knots, maybe one or two more, sir. If his speed's much higher than that, the range is awfully far.”

“Okay, I want us to come around very gently, come right to zero-eight-zero.”

“Aye aye, sir. Helm, right five degrees rudder, come to new course zero-eight-zero.”

“Right five degrees rudder, aye. Sir, my rudder is right five degrees, coming to new course zero-eight-zero.”

“Very well.”

Slowly, so as not to make too great a bend in the towed array, USS Maine reversed course. It took three minutes before she settled down on the new course, doing something no US fleet ballistic-missile submarine had ever done before. Lieutenant-Commander Claggett appeared in the control room soon thereafter.

“How long you figure he's going to hold this course?” he asked Ricks.

“What would you do?”

“I think I'd troll along in a ladder pattern,” Dutch answered, “and my drift would be south instead of north, reverse of how we do it in the Barents Sea, right? Interval between sweeps will be determined by the performance of his tail. That's one hard piece of intel we can develop, but depending on how that number looks, we'll have to be real careful how we trail him, won't we?”

“Well, I can't approach to less than thirty thousand yards under any circumstances. So… we'll close to fifty-K until we have a better feel for him, then ease it in as circumstances permit. One of us should be in here at all times as long as he's in the neighborhood.”

“Agreed.” Claggett nodded. He paused for a beat before going on. “How the hell,” the XO asked very quietly indeed, “did OP-O2 ever agree to this?”

“Safer world now, isn't it?”

“I s'pose, sir.”

“You're jealous that boomers can do a fast-attack job?”

“Sir, I think that OP-O2 slipped a gear, either that or they're trying to impress some folks with our flexibility or something.”

“You don't like this?”

“No, Captain, I don't. I know we can do it, but I don't think we should.”

“Is that what you talked to Mancuso about?”

“What?” Claggett shook his head. “No, sir. Well, he did ask me that, and I said we could do it. Not my place to enter into that yet.”

Then what did you talk to him about! Ricks wanted to ask. He couldn't, of course.

The Americans were a great disappointment to Oleg Kirilovich Kadishev. The whole reason they'd recruited him was to get good inside information on the Soviet government, and he'd delivered precisely that for years. He'd seen the sweeping political changes coming for his country, seen them early because he'd known Andrey Il'ych Narmonov for what he was. And for what he was not. The President of his country was a man of stunning political gifts. He had the courage of a lion and the tactical agility of a mongoose. It was a plan that he lacked. Narmonov had no idea where he was going, and that was his weakness. He had destroyed the old political order, eliminated the Warsaw Pact through inaction, merely by saying out loud, only once, that the Soviet Union would not interfere with the political integrity of other countries, and had done so in the knowledge that the only thing that kept Marxism in place was the threat of Soviet force. The Eastern European communists had foolishly played along, actually thinking themselves secure in the love and respect of their people in one of history's most colossal and least understood acts of lunacy. But what made the irony sublime was that Narmonov could not see the same thing in his own country, to which was added one more, fatal, variable.

The Soviet people — a term that never had any meaning, of course — were held together only by the threat of force. Only the guns of the Red Army guaranteed that Moldavians, and Latvians, and Tadzhiks and so many others would follow the Moscow line. They loved the communist leadership even less than the greatgrandfathers had loved the czars. And so while Narmonov had dismantled the Party's central role in managing the country, he'd eliminated his ability to control his people, but left himself no ethos with which to supplant what had gone before. The plan — in a nation which for over eighty years had always had The Plan — simply did not exist. So, necessarily, when turmoil began to replace order, there was nothing to do, nothing to point to, no goal to strive for. Narmonov's dazzling political maneuvers were ultimately pointless. Kadishev saw that. Why didn't the Americans, who had gambled everything on the survival of “their man” in Moscow?

The forty-six-year-old parliamentarian snorted at the thought. He was their man, wasn't he? He'd warned them for years, and they hadn't listened, but instead used his reports to buttress a man who was rich in skill but bereft of vision — and how could a man lead without vision?

The Americans, just as foolish, just as blind, had actually been surprised by the violence in Georgia, and the Baltic states. They actually ignored the nascent civil war that had already begun in the arc of Southern republics. Half a million military weapons had vanished in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Mostly rifles, but some were tanks! The Soviet Army could not begin to deal with the situation. Narmonov struggled with it on a day-to-day basis like some kind of desperate juggler, barely managing to keep up, taking his effort from one place to another, keeping his plates in the air, but barely. Didn't the Americans understand that some fine day all the plates would fall at the same time? The consequences of that were frightening to everyone. Narmonov needed a vision, needed a plan, but he didn't have one.

Kadishev did, and that was the entire point of his exercise. The Union had to be broken up. The Muslim republics had to go. The Balts had to go. Moldavia had to go. The Western Ukraine had to go — he wanted to keep the Eastern part. He had to find a way to protect the Armenians, lest they be massacred by the local Muslims, and had to find a way to keep access to the oil of Azerbaijan, at least long enough until, with help from the West, he could exploit all the resources of Siberia.

Kadishev was a Russian. It was part of his soul. Russia was the mother of the Union, and like a good mother, she would let her children go at the proper time. The proper time was now. That would leave a country stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, with a largely homogeneous population, and immense resources that were scarcely catalogued, much less tapped. It could and should be a great, strong country, powerful as any, rich in history and arts, a leader in the sciences. That was Kadishev's vision. He wished to lead a Russia that was a true superpower, a friend and associate to other countries of European heritage. It was his task to bring his country into the light of freedom and prosperity. If that meant dismissing almost half of the population and twenty-five percent of the land — so be it.

But the Americans weren't helping. Why this should be so, he simply did not understand. They had to see that Narmonov was a street without an exit, a road that merely stopped… or perhaps stopped at the brink of a great abyss.

If the Americans couldn't help, then it was within his power to force them to help. That was why he had allowed himself to be recruited by Mary Foley in the first place.

It was early morning in Moscow, but Kadishev was a man who had long since disciplined himself to live on a minimum of sleep. He typed his report on an old, heavy, but quiet machine. Kadishev used the same cloth ribbon many times. No one would ever be able to examine the ribbon to see what had been written on it, and the paper was from a sheaf taken from the office central supply room. Several hundred people had access to it. Like all professional gamblers, Kadishev was a careful man. When he was finished, he used leather gloves to wipe the paper clean of whatever fingerprints he might have accidentally left on it, then, using the same gloves, he folded the copy into a coat pocket. In two hours, the message would be passed. In less than twenty, the message would be in other hands.

Agent SPINNAKER needn't have bothered, KGB was under orders not to harass the People's Deputies. The coat-check girl pocketed the paper, and soon thereafter passed it across to an individual whose name she did not know. That man left the building and drove to his own work place. Two hours after that, the message was in another container in the pocket of a man driving to the airport, where he boarded the 747 for New York.

“Where to this time, Doctor?” the driver asked.

“Just drive around.”

“What?”

“We need to talk,” Kaminiskiy said.

“About what?”

“I know you are KGB,” Kaminiskiy said.

“Doctor,” the driver chuckled, “I am an embassy driver.”

“Your embassy medical file is signed by Dr. Feodor Il'ych Gregoriyev. He is a KGB doctor. We were classmates. May I go on?”

“Have you told anyone?”

“Of course not.”

The driver sighed. Well, what could one do about that? “What is it you wish to talk about?”

“You are KGB — Foreign Directorate?”

There was no avoiding it. “Correct. I hope this is important.”

“It may be. I need someone to come down from Moscow. There's a patient I'm treating. He has a very unusual lung problem.”

“Why should it interest me?”

“I've seen a similar problem before — a worker from Beloyarskiy. Industrial accident, I was called in to consult on it.”

“Yes? What is at Beloyarskiy?”

“They fabricate atomic weapons there.”

The driver slowed the car. “Are you serious?”

“It could be something else — but the tests I need to run now are very specific. If this represents a Syrian project, we will not get the proper cooperation. Therefore, I need some special equipment from Moscow.”

“How quickly?”

The patient isn't going anywhere, except into the ground. I'm afraid his condition is quite hopeless."

“I have to go through the Rezident on this. He won't be back until Sunday.”

“Fast enough.”