The Sum of All Fears

32 CLOSURE

“Can I help?” Russell asked.

“Thank you, Marvin, but I would really prefer to do this myself, without distractions,” Ghosn said.

“I understand. Yell if you need anything.”

Ibrahim donned his heaviest clothing and walked out into the cold. The snow was falling quite hard. He'd seen snow in Lebanon, of course, but nothing like this. The storm had scarcely begun half an hour before and there was already more than three centimeters of it. The northerly wind was the most bitter he'd ever experienced, cutting into his very bones as he walked the sixty meters or so to the barn. Visibility was restricted to no more than two hundred meters. He could hear the traffic on the nearby highway, but could not even see the lights of the vehicles. He entered the barn through a side door and already regretted the fact that this building had no heating. Ghosn told himself very forcefully that he could not allow such things to affect him.

The cardboard box that shielded the device from casual view was not actually attached, and came off easily. What lay under that was a metal box with dials and other accoutrements for what it pretended to be, a commercial video-tape machine. The suggestion had come from Günther Bock, and the actual body of the machine had been purchased as scrap from a Syrian TV news agency which had replaced it with a new model. The access doors built into the metal body were almost perfectly suited to Ghosn's purpose, and the ample void space held the vacuum pump, in case that was needed. Ghosn instantly saw that it was not. The gauge that was part of the bomb case showed that the body had not leaked any air at all. That hardly came as a surprise — Ghosn was just as skilled a welder as he had told the late Manfred Fromm — but it was gratifying to the young engineer. Next he checked the batteries. There were three of these, all new, all nickel-cadmium, and all, he saw, fully charged, according to the test circuit. The timing device was next to the batteries. Making sure that its firing terminals were vacant, he checked its time — it was already set on local — against his watch, and saw that either one or the other (probably his watch) was a total of three seconds off. That was close enough for his purposes. Three glasses placed inside the box to illustrate any rough handling in transit were still intact. The shippers had taken their care, as he had hoped.

“You are ready, my friend,” Ghosn said quietly. He closed the inspection door, made sure it was properly latched, then replaced the cardboard cover. Ghosn blew warm breath on his hands, then walked back to the house.

“How will the weather affect us?” Qati asked Russell.

“There's another storm behind this one. I figure we'll drive down tomorrow evening, right before it starts. The second one will be short, maybe another inch or two, they say. If we go in between the two, the road should be all right. Then we check into the motel, and wait for the right time, right?”

“Correct. And the truck?”

“I'll do the painting today, soon as I have the heaters rigged. That's only two hours' work. I have the templates all done,” Russell said as he finished his coffee. “Load the bomb after I paint, okay?”

“How long for the paint to dry?” Ghosn asked.

“Three hours, tops. I want the paint job to be good, okay?”

“That is fine, Marvin.”

Russell laughed as he collected the breakfast dishes. “Man, I wonder what the people who made that movie would think?” He turned to see puzzlement on the faces of his guests.

“Didn't Günther tell you?” The faces were blank. “I saw the movie on television once. Black Sunday. A guy came up with an idea of killing the whole Superbowl crowd from a blimp.”

“You're joking,” Qati observed.

“No, in the movie they had a big antipersonnel thing on the bottom of the blimp, but the Israelis found out what was going on, and their CIA guys got there in the nick of time — you know, how it usually happens in the movies. With my people, it was always the cavalry that got there in the nick of time, so's they could kill all the savage Indians.”

“In this movie, the objective was to kill the entire stadium?” Ghosn asked, very quietly.

“Huh — oh, yeah, that's right.” Russell was loading the dishes into the dishwasher. “Not like we're doing.” He turned. “Hey, don't feel bad. Just taking out the TV coverage is going to piss people off like you wouldn't believe. And this stadium is covered, okay? That blimp-thing wouldn't work. You'd need like a nuke or something to do the same thing.”

“There's an idea,” Ghosn observed with a chuckle, wondering what reaction he'd get.

“Some idea. Yeah, you might start a real nuclear war — shit, man, guess whose people lives up in the Dakotas, where all those SAC bases are? I don't think I could play that kind of a game.” Russell dumped in the detergent and started the wash cycle. “What exactly do you have in that thing anyway?”

“A very compact and powerful high-explosive compound. It will do some damage to the stadium, of course.”

“I figured that. Well, taking out the TV won't be hard — that's delicate shit, y'know? — and just doing that — man, I'm telling you, it's going to have an effect like you wouldn't believe.”

“I agree, Marvin, but I would like to hear your reasoning on this,” Qati said.

“We've never had a really destructive terrorist act over here. This one will change things. People won't feel safe. They'll install check points and security stuff everywhere. it'll really piss people off, make people think. Maybe they'll see what the real problems are. That's the whole point, isn't it?”

“Correct, Marvin,” Qati replied.

“Can I help you with the painting?” Ghosn asked. He might get curious, Ibrahim thought, and they couldn't have that.

“I'd appreciate it.”

“You must promise to turn the heat on,” the engineer observed with a smile.

“Depend on it, man, or else the paint won't dry right. I guess this is kinda cold for ya.”

“Your people must be very hard to live in such a place.”

Russell reached for his coat and gloves. “Hey, man, it's our place, y'know?”

“Do you really expect to find him?” the Starpom asked.

“I think we have a fine chance,” Dubinin replied, leaning over the chart. “He'll be somewhere in here, well away from the coastal waters — too many fishermen with nets there — and north of this area.”

“Excellent, Captain, only two million square kilometers to search.”

“And we will cover only two-thirds of that. I said a fine chance, not a certainty. In three or four more years, we'll have the RPV the designers are working on, and we can send our sonar receptors down into the deep sound channel.” Dubinin referred to the next step in submarine technology, a robot mini-sub, which would be controlled from the mother ship by a fiber-optic cable. It would carry both sensors and weapons, and by diving very deep it could find out if sonar conditions in the thousand-to-two-thousand-meter regime were really as good as the theorists suggested. That would change the game radically.

“Anything on the turbulence sensors?”

“Negative, Captain,” a lieutenant answered.

“I wonder if those things are worth the trouble…” the executive officer groused.

“They worked the last time.”

“We had calm seas overhead then. How often are the seas calm in the North Pacific in winter?”

“It could still tell us something. We must use every trick we have. Why are you not optimistic?”

“Even Ramius only tracked an Ohio once, and that was on builder's trials, when they had the shaft problem. And even then, he only held the contact for — what? Seventy minutes.”

“We had this one before.”

“True enough, Captain.” The Starpom tapped a pencil on the chart.

Dubinin thought about his intelligence briefing on the enemy — old habits were hard to break. Harrison Sharpe Ricks, Captain, Naval Academy, in his second missile-submarine command, reportedly a brilliant engineer and technician, a likely candidate for higher command. A hard and demanding taskmaster, highly regarded in his navy. He'd made a mistake before, and was unlikely to make another, Dubinin told himself.

“Fifty thousand yards, exactly,” Ensign Shaw reported.

“This guy's not doing any Crazy Ivans,” Claggett thought for the first time.

“He's not expecting to be hunted himself, is he?” Ricks asked.

“I guess not, but his tail's not as good as he thinks it is.” The Akula was doing a ladder-search pattern. The long legs were on a roughly south-west-to-north-east vector, and at the end of each he shifted down south-east to the next leg, with an interval between search legs of about fifty thousand yards, twenty-five nautical miles. That gave a notional range of about thirteen miles to the Russian's towed-array sonar. At least, Claggett thought, that's what the intelligence guys would have said.

“You know, I think we'll hold at fifty-K yards, just to play it on the safe side,” Ricks announced, after a moment's reflection. “This guy is a lot quieter than I expected.”

“Plant noises are down quite a bit, aren't they? If this guy was creeping instead of trying to cover ground…” Claggett was pleased that his Captain was speaking like his conservative-engineer self again. He wasn't especially surprised. When push came to shove, Ricks reverted to type, but that was all right with the XO, who didn't think it was especially prudent to play fast-attack with a billion-dollar boomer.

“We could still hold him at forty, thirty-five tops.”

“Think so? How much will his tail's performance improve with a slower speed?”

“Good point. it'll be some, but intelligence calls it a thin-line array like ours… probably not all that much. Even so, we're getting a good profile on this bird, aren't we?” Ricks asked rhetorically. He'd get a gold star in his copybook for this.

“So, what do you think, MP?” Jack asked Mrs. Foley. He held the translation in his hand. She'd opted for the original Russian-language document.

“Hey, I recruited him, Jack. He's my boy.”

Ryan checked his watch; it was just about time. Sir Basil Charleston was nothing if not punctual. His secure direct-line phone rang right on the hour.

“Ryan.”

“Bas here.”

“What gives, man?”

“That thing we talked out, we had our chap look into it. Nothing at all, my boy.”

“Not even that our impressions were incorrect?” Jack asked, his eyes screwed tightly shut, as though to keep the news out.

“Correct, Jack, not even that. I admit I find that slightly curious, but it is plausible, if not likely, that our chap should not know this.”

“Thanks for trying, pal. We owe you one.”

“Sorry we could not be of help.” The line went dead.

It was the worst possible news, Ryan thought. He stared briefly at the ceiling.

“The Brits have been unable to confirm or deny SPINNAKER 's allegations,” Jack announced. “What's that leave us with?”

“It's really like this?” Ben Goodley asked. “It all comes down to opinion?”

“Ben, if we were really that smart at reading fortunes, we'd be making fortunes in the stock market,” Ryan said gruffly.

“But you did!” Goodley pointed out.

“I got lucky on a few hot issues.” Ryan dismissed the observation. “Mary Pat, what do you think?”

Mrs. Foley looked tired, but then she had an infant to worry about. Jack thought he should tell her to take it easier. “I have to back up my agent, Jack. You know that. He's our best source of political intelligence. He gets in to see Narmonov alone. That's why he's so valuable, and that's why his stuff has always been hard to back up — but it's never been wrong, has it?”

“The scary part is that he's starting to convince me.”

“Why scary, Dr. Ryan?”

Jack lit a cigarette. “'Cause I know Narmonov. That man could have made me disappear one cold night outside o' Moscow. We cut a deal, shook on it, and that was that. Takes a very confident man to do something like that. If he has lost that confidence, then… then the whole thing could come apart, rapidly and unpredictably. Can you think of anything scarier than that?” Ryan's eyes swept the room.

“Not hardly,” agreed the head of the Intelligence Directorate's Russian Department. “I think we have to go with it.”

“So do I,” Mary Pat agreed.

“Ben?” Jack asked. “You believed this guy from the beginning. What he says backs up your position from up at Harvard.”

Dr. Benjamin Goodley didn't like being cornered like that. He had learned a hard but important lesson in his months in CIA: it was one thing to form an opinion in an academic community, to discuss options around the lunch tables in the Harvard faculty club, but it was different here. From these opinions national policy was made. And that, he realized, was what being captured by the system actually meant.

“I hate to say this, but I've changed my mind. There may be a dynamic here we haven't examined.”

“What might that be?” the head of the Russian Department asked.

“Just consider this abstractly. If Narmonov goes down, who replaces him?”

“Kadishev is one of the possibilities, say one chance in three or so,” Mary Pat answered.

“In academia — hell, anywhere — isn't that a conflict of interest?”

“M.P.?” Ryan asked, shifting his eyes.

“Okay, so what? When has he ever lied to us before?”

Goodley decided to run with it, pretending this was an academic discussion. “Mrs. Foley, I was detailed to look for indications that SPINNAKER was wrong. I've checked everything I've had access to. The only thing I've found is a slight change in the tone of his reports over the last few months. The way he uses language is subtly different. His statements are more positive, less speculative in some areas. Now, that may fit his reports — the content of them, I mean — but… there may be some meaning in that.”

“You're basing your evaluation on how he dots his i's?” The Russian expert demanded with a snort. “Kid, we don't do that sort of work here.”

“Well, I have to take this one downtown,” Ryan said. “I have to tell the President that we think he's right. I want to get Andrews and Kantrowitz in here to backstop us — objections?” There were none. “Okay, thank you. Ben, could you stay for a moment? Mary Pat, take a long weekend. That's an order.”

“She's colicky, and I haven't been getting much sleep,” Mrs. Foley explained.

“So, have Ed take the night duty,” Jack suggested.

“Ed doesn't have tits. I nurse, remember?”

“M.P., has it ever occurred to you that nursing is a conspiracy of lazy men?” Ryan asked with a grin.

The baleful look in her eyes concealed her good humor. “Yeah, at about two every morning. See you Monday.”

Goodley got back in his chair after the other two left. “Okay, you can yell at me now ”

Jack waved for him to light up. “What do you mean?”

“For bringing up a dumb idea.”

“Dumb idea, my ass. You were the first to suggest it. You've been doing good work.”

“I haven't found beans,” the Harvard scholar grumbled.

“No, but you've been looking in all the right places.”

“If this stuff was for real, how likely is it that you'd be able to confirm through other sources?” Goodley asked.

“A little better than even money, maybe sixty percent, tops Mary Pat was right. This guy's been giving us stuff we can't always get somewhere else. But you're also correct: he stands to profit from being right. I have to run this one down to the White House before the weekend starts. Then I'm going to call Jake Kantrowitz and Eric Andrews and get them to fly in here for a look-see next week. Got any particular plans for the weekend?” Jack asked.

“No.”

“You do now. I want you to sweep through all your notes and do us a position paper, a good one.” Ryan tapped his desk “I want it here Monday morning.”

“Why?”

“Because you're intellectually honest, Ben. When you look at something, you really look.”

“But you never agree with my conclusions!” Goodley objected.

“Not very often, but your supporting data is first-rate. Nobody's right all the time. Nobody's wrong all the time, either. The process is important, the intellectual discipline, and you have that locked down pretty tight, Dr. Goodley. I hope you like living in Washington. I'm going to offer you a permanent position here. We're setting up a special group in the DI. Their mission will be to take contrarian positions, an in-house Team-B that reports directly to the DDI. You'll be the number-two man in the Russian section. Think you can handle it? Think carefully, Ben,” Jack added hastily “You'll take a lot of heat from the A-Team. Long hours, mediocre pay, and not a hell of a lot of satisfaction at the end of the day. But you'll see a lot of good stuff, and every so often someone's going to pay attention to you. Anyway, the position paper I want will be your entrance exam — if you're interested. I don't give a good goddamn what your conclusions are, but I want something I can contrast with what I'm going to get from everybody else. You game or not?”

Goodley squirmed in his seat and hesitated before talking. Christ, was this going to abort his career? But he couldn't not say it, could he? He let out his breath, and spoke. There's something you should know."

“Okay.”

“When Dr. Elliot sent me here—”

“You were supposed to critique me. I know.” Ryan was very amused. “I did a pretty good job of seduction, didn't I?”

“Jack, there was more to it than that… she wanted me to do a personal check… to look for stuff that she could use against you.”

Ryan's face went very cold. “And?”

Goodley flushed, but went on rapidly. “And I delivered. I checked your file for the SEC investigation, and passed on some things about other financial dealings — the Zimmer family, stuff like that.” He paused. “I'm pretty ashamed of myself.”

“Learn anything?”

“About you? You're a good boss. Marcus is a lazy asshole, looks good in a suit. Liz Elliot is a prissy, mean-spirited bitch; she really likes manipulating people. She used me like a bird-dog. I learned something, all right. I'll never, ever do that again. Sir, I've never apologized like this to anyone before, but you ought to know. You have a right to know.”

Ryan stared into the young man's eyes for more than a minute, wondering if he'd flinch, wondering what sort of stuff was in there. Finally, he stubbed out his cigarette. “Make sure it's a good position paper, Ben.”

“You'll get the best I have.”

“I think I already have, Dr. Goodley.”

“Well?” President Fowler asked.

“Mr. President, SPINNAKER reports that there is definitely a number of tactical nuclear weapons missing from Soviet Army inventories, and that the KGB is conducting a frantic search for them.”

“Where?”

“All over Europe, including inside the Soviet Union itself. Supposedly, KGB is loyal to Narmonov, at least most of it, Narmonov thinks — our man says he's not so sure. The Soviet military is definitely not; he says that a coup is a serious possibility, but Narmonov is not taking strong enough action to deal with it. The possibility of blackmail is quite real. If this report is correct, there is the possibility of a rapid power shift over there whose consequences are impossible to estimate.”

“And what do you think?” Dennis Bunker asked soberly.

“The consensus at Langley is that this may be reliable information. We're beginning a careful check of all relevant data. The two best outside consultants are at Princeton and Berkeley. I'll have them in the office Monday to look over our data.”

“When will you have a firm estimate?” Secretary Talbot asked.

“Depends on what you mean by firm. End of next week, we'll have a preliminary estimate. 'Firm' is going to take a while. I've tried getting this confirmed by our British colleagues, but they came up blank.”

“Where could those things show up?” Liz Elliot asked.

“ Russia 's a big country,” Ryan replied.

“It's a big world,” Bunker said. “What's your worst-case estimate?”

“We haven't started that process yet,” Jack answered. “When you're talking about missing nuclear weapons, worst-cases can be pretty bad.”

“Is there any reason to suspect a threat directed against us?” Fowler asked.

“No, Mr. President. The Soviet military is rational, and that would be an act of lunacy.”

“Your faith in the uniformed mentality is touching,” Liz Elliot noted. “You really think theirs are more intelligent than ours?”

“They deliver when we ask them to,” Dennis Bunker said sharply. “I wish you would have just a little respect for them, Dr. Elliot.”

“We will save that for another day,” Fowler observed. “What could they possibly gain from threatening us?”

“Nothing, Mr. President,” Ryan answered.

“Agreed,” Brent Talbot said.

“I'll feel better when those SS-18s are gone,” Bunker noted, “but Ryan's right.”

“I want an estimate on that, too,” Elliot said. “I want it fast.”

“You'll get it,” Jack promised.

“What about the Mexico operation?”

“Mr. President, the assets are in place.”

“What is this?” the Secretary of State asked.

“Brent, I think it's time you got briefed in on this. Ryan, commence.”

Jack ran through the background information and the operational concept. It took several minutes.

“I can't believe they'd do such a thing: it's outrageous,” Talbot said.

“Is this why you're not coming out to the game?” Bunker asked with a smile. “Brent, I can believe it. How quickly will you have the transcripts from the aircraft?”

“Given his ETA into Washington, plus processing time… say around ten that night.”

“You can still come out to the game then, Bob,” Bunker said. It was the first time Ryan had ever seen someone address the President that way.

Fowler shook his head. “I'll catch it at Camp David. I want to be bright-eyed for this meet. Besides, the storm that just hit Denver might be here Sunday. Getting back into town could be tough, and the Secret Service spent a couple hours explaining how bad football games are for me — meaning them, of course.”

“Going to be a good one,” Talbot said.

“What's the point spread?” Fowler asked.

Jesus! Ryan thought.

“Vikings by three,” Bunker said. “I'll take all of that action I can get.”

“We're flying out together,” Talbot said. “Just so Dennis doesn't drive the airplane.”

“Leaving me up the hills of Maryland. Well, somebody has to mind the government.” Fowler smiled. He had an odd smile, Jack thought. “Back to business. Ryan: you said this is not a threat to us?”

“Let me backtrack, sir. First, I must emphasize that the SPINNAKER report remains totally unconfirmed.”

“You said the CIA backs it.”

“There is a consensus of opinion that it is probably reliable. We're checking that very hard right now. That's the whole point of what I said earlier.”

“Okay,” Fowler said. “If it's not true, there is nothing for us to worry about, correct?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“And if it is?”

“Then the risk is one of political blackmail in the Soviet Union, worst-case, a civil war with the use of nuclear weapons.”

“Which is not good news — possible threats to us?”

“No direct threat to us is likely.”

Fowler leaned back in his chair. “That makes sense, I suppose. But I want a really, really good estimate of that just as fast as you can get it to me.”

“Yes, sir. Believe me, Mr. President, we're checking every aspect of this development.”

“Good report, Dr. Ryan.”

Jack stood to take his dismissal. It was so much more civilized now that they'd gotten rid of him.

The markets had sprung up of their own accord, mainly in the eastern sections of Berlin. Soviet soldiers, never the most free of individuals, now found themselves in an undivided Western city that offered each the chance simply to walk away, to disappear. The amazing thing was that so few did it, despite the controls kept on them, and one reason for it was the availability of open-air markets. The individual Soviet soldiers were continuously surprised at the desire of Germans, Americans and so many others to buy memorabilia of the Red Army — belts, shapka fur hats, boots, whole uniforms, all manner of trinkets — and the fools paid cash. Hard-currency cash, dollars, pounds, Deutschmarks, whose value at home in the Soviet Union was multiplied tenfold. Other sales to more discriminating buyers had included such big-ticket items as a T-8o tank, but that had required the connivance of a regimental commander, who'd justified it in his paperwork as the accidental destruction of a vehicle by fire. The colonel had gotten a Mercedes 56oSEL from that, with plenty of cash left over for his retirement fund. Western intelligence agencies had gotten all they wished by this point, leaving the markets to amateurs and tourists; they assumed that the Soviets tolerated it for the simple reason that it brought a good deal of hard currency into their economy, and did so at bargain prices. Westerners typically paid more than ten times the actual production cost of what they purchased. The introductory course in capitalism, some Russians thought, would have other payoffs when the troops concluded their conscripted service.

Erwin Keitel approached one such Soviet soldier, a senior sergeant by rank. “Good day,” he said in German.

“Nicht spreche,” the Russian answered “English?”

“English is okay, yes?”

“Da.” The Russian nodded.

“Ten uniforms.” Keitel held up both hands to make the number unambiguous.

“Ten?”

“Ten, all large, big like me,” Keitel said. He could have spoken in perfect Russian, but that would have caused more trouble than it was worth. “Colonel uniforms, all colonel, okay?”

“Colonel — polkovnik. Regiment officer, yes? Three stars here?” the man tapped his shoulders.

“Yes.” Keitel nodded. Tank uniform, must be for tank."

“Why you want?” the sergeant asked, mainly to be polite. He was a tanker, and getting the right garb was not a problem.

“Make movie — television movie.”

“Television?” The man's eyes lit up. “Belts, boots?”

“Yes.”

The man checked left and right, then lowered his voice. “Pistol?”

“You can do that?”

The sergeant smiled and nodded emphatically to show that he was a serious broker. “Take money.”

“Must be Russian pistol, correct pistol,” Keitel said, hoping that this pidgin exchange was clear.

“Yes, I can get.”

“How soon?”

“One hour.”

“How much?”

“Five thousand mark, no pistol. Ten pistol, five thousand mark more.” And that, Keitel thought, was highway robbery.

He held up his hands again. “Ten thousand mark, yes. I pay.” To show he was serious, he displayed a sheaf of hundred-mark notes. He tucked one in the soldier's pocket. “I wait one hour.”

“I come back here, one hour.” The soldier left the area rapidly. Keitel walked into the nearest Gasthaus and ordered a beer.

“If this were any easier,” he observed to a colleague, “I'd say it was a trap.”

“You heard about the tank?”

“The T-8o, yes, why?”

“Willi Heydrich did that for the Americans.”

“Willi?” Keitel shook his head. “What was his fee?”

“Five hundred thousand D-Mark. Damned-fool Americans. Anyone could have set that up.”

“But they didn't know that at the time.” The man laughed bleakly. DM 500,000 had been enough to set the former Oberst-Leutnant Wilhelm Heydrich up in a business — a Gasthaus like this one — which made for a much better living than he'd ever gotten from the Stasi. Heydrich had been one of Keitel's most promising subordinates, and now he had sold out, quit his career, turned his back on his political heritage, and turned into one more new-German citizen. His intelligence training had merely served as a vehicle, to take one last measure of spite out on the Americans.

“What about the Russian?”

“The one who made the deal? Ha!” the man snorted. “Two million marks. He undoubtedly paid off the division commander, got his Mercedes, and banked the rest. That unit rotated back to the Union soon thereafter, and one tank more or less from a division…? The inspectorate might not even have noticed.”

They had one more round, while watching the TV over the bar — a disgusting habit picked up from the Americans, Keitel thought. When forty minutes had passed, he went back outside, with his colleague in visual contact. It might be a trap, after all.

The Russian sergeant was back early. He wasn't carrying anything but a smile.

“Where is it?” Keitel asked.

“Truck, around…” the man gestured.

“Ecke? Corner?”

“Da, that word, corner. Um die Ecke.” The man nodded emphatically.

Keitel waved to the other man, who went to get the car. Erwin wanted to ask the soldier how much of the money was going to his lieutenant, who typically skimmed a sizable percentage of every deal for their own use, but that really was beside the point, wasn't it?

The Soviet Army GAZ-69 light truck was parked a block away. It was a simple matter of backing up the agent's car to the tailgate and popping the trunk. But first, of course, Keitel had to inspect the merchandise. There were ten camouflage battle-dress uniforms, lightweight, but of better than normal quality, because these were for officers' use. Headwear was a black beret with the red star and rather antique-looking tank badge that showed them to be for an armor officer. The shoulderboards of each uniform had the three stars of a full colonel. Also included were the uniform belts and boots.

“Pistolen?” Keitel asked.

First, eyes swept the street. Then ten cardboard boxes appeared. Keitel pointed to one, and it opened to reveal a Makarov PM. That was a 9-millimeter automatic modeled on the German Walther PP. The Russians, in a gesture of magnanimity, even tossed in five boxes of 9mm-x-18 ball ammunition.

“Ausgezeichnet,” Keitel observed, reaching for his money. He counted out ninety-nine hundred-mark bills.

“Thank you,” the Russian said. “You need more, you see me, yes?”

“Yes, thank you.” Keitel shook his hand and got into the car.

“What has the world become?” the driver said as he headed off. As recently as three years before, those soldiers would have been court-martialed — perhaps even shot — for what they had done.

“We have enriched the Soviet Union to the tune of ten thousand marks.”

The driver grunted. “Doch, and that 'merchandise' must have cost at least two thousand to manufacture! What is it they call that..?”

“A 'volume discount.'” Keitel couldn't decide whether to laugh or not. “Our Russian friends learn fast. Or perhaps the muzhik cannot count past ten.”

“What we plan to do is dangerous.”

“That is true, but we are being well paid.”

“You think I do this for money?” the man asked, an edge on his voice.

“No, nor do I. But if we must risk our lives, we might as well be rewarded for it.”

“As you say, Colonel.”

It never occurred to Keitel that he really did not know what he was doing, that Bock had not told him everything. For all his professionalism, Keitel had neglected to remind himself that he was doing business with a terrorist.

The air was wonderfully still, Ghosn thought. He'd never experienced really heavy snow. The storm was lingering longer than expected, was expected to continue for another hour or so. It had dropped half a meter, which, along with the flakes still in the air, muffled sound to a degree he had never known. It was a silence you could hear, he told himself standing on the porch.

“Like it, eh?” Marvin asked.

“Yes.”

“When I was a boy, we got really big storms, not like this one, storms that dropped feet of snow — like a whole meter at once, man — and then it would really get cold, like twenty or thirty below. You go outside, and it's like you're on another planet or something, and you wonder what it was like a hundred years ago, living in a tipi with your woman and your babies and your horses outside, everything clean and pure like it's supposed to be. It must have been something, man, it must have really been something.”

The man was poetic, but foolish, Ibrahim thought. So primitive a life, most of your children died before their first year had ended, starving in winter because there was no game to hunt. What fodder was there for the horses, and how did they get to it under the snow? How many people and animals froze to death? Yet he idolized the life. That was foolish. Marvin had courage. He had tenacity, and strength, and devotion, but the fact of the matter was that he didn't understand the world, didn't know God, and lived according to a fantasy. It really was unfortunate. He could have been a valuable asset.

“When do we leave?”

“We'll give the highway boys a couple of hours to scrape the roads. You take the car — it has front-wheel drive and you won't have any problem driving. I'll take the van. There's no hurry, right? We don't want to take chances?”

“That is right.”

“Let's go inside 'ore we both freeze.”

“They really gotta clean up the air in this place,” Clark said, when he finished coughing.

“It is pretty bad,” Chavez agreed.

They'd rented a small place near the airport. Everything they needed was tucked away in closets. They'd made their contacts on the ground. The usual service team would be sick when the 747 came in. It would be a fiscal illness, of course. It turned out that getting the two CIA officers aboard wasn't all that hard. The Mexicans did not especially like the Japanese, at least not the government kind, whom they regarded as more arrogant than Americans — which, to a Mexican citizen, was remarkable. Clark checked his watch. Nine more hours until it swooped in through the pollution. Just a brief courtesy visit to see the Mexican president, supposedly, then off to Washington to see Fowler. Well, that made things easy for Clark and Chavez.

They started off for Denver just at midnight. The Colorado state-roads teams had done their usual professional job. What could not be scraped was salted and sanded, and the usual one-hour drive took merely an additional fifteen minutes. Marvin handled the check-in, paying for three nights with cash, and making a show of getting a receipt for his expense account. The desk clerk noted the ABC logo on the truck, and was disappointed that the rooms he'd given them were around back. Had they parked in front, maybe he could get more business. As soon as he left, the clerk went back to dozing in front of the TV. The Minnesota fans would be arriving the next day, and they promised to be a raucous, troublesome crowd.

The meet with Lyalin proved easier to arrange than expected. Cabot's brief get-acquainted session with the new head of the Korean CIA had gone even more smoothly than he'd dared to hope — the Koreans were quite professional — allowing him to fly off to Japan twelve hours early. The Chief of Station Tokyo had a favorite spot, a hostess house located in one of the innumerable meandering backstreets within a mile of the embassy, and also a place very easy to secure and surveil.

“Here is my latest report,” Agent M USHASHI said, handing over the envelope.

“Our President is most impressed with the quality of your information,” Cabot replied.

“As I am impressed with the salary.”

“So, what can I do for you?”

“I wanted to be sure that you are taking me seriously,” Lyalin said.

“We do that,” Marcus assured him. Does this fellow think we pay in the millions for the fun of it? he wondered. It was Cabot's first face-to-face with an agent. Though he'd been briefed to expect a conversation just like this one, it still came as a surprise.

“I plan to defect in a year, with my family. What exactly will you do for me?”

“Well, we will debrief you at length, then assist you in finding a comfortable place to live and work.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere you wish, within reason.” Cabot managed to conceal his exasperation. This was work for a junior case officer.

“What do you mean, 'within reason'?”

“We won't let you live right across the street from the Russian Embassy. What exactly do you have in mind?”

“I don't know yet.”

Then why did you bring this up? “What sort of climate do you like?”

“Warm, I think.”

“Well, there's Florida, lots of sun.”

“I will think about that.” The man paused. “You do not lie to me?”

“Mr. Lyalin, we take good care of our guests.”

“Okay. I will continue to send you information.” And with that, the man simply got up and left.

Marcus Cabot managed not to swear, but the look he gave to the station chief ignited a laugh.

“First time you've done a touchy-feely, right?”

“You mean, that's all?” Cabot could scarcely believe it.

“Director, this is a funny business. Crazy as it sounds, what you just did was very important,” Sam Yamata said. “Now he knows that we really care about him. Bringing up the President was a good move, by the way.”

“You say so.” Cabot opened the envelope and started reading. “Good Lord!”

“More on the Prime Minister's trip?”

“Yes, the details we didn't get before. Which bank, payoffs to other officials. We may not even need to bug the airplane…”

“Bug an airplane?” Yamata asked.

“You never heard me say that.”

The station chief nodded. “How could I? You were never here.”

“I need to get this off to Washington fast.”

Yamata checked his watch. “We'll never catch the direct flight in time.”

“Then we'll fax it secure.”

“We're not set up for that. Not on the Agency side, I mean.”

“How about the NSA guys?”

“They have it, Director, but we've been warned about the security of their systems.”

“The President needs this. It has to go out. Do it, my authority.”

“Yes, sir.”