crap. We–what do you say to a cup of coffee?”
“That would be most welcome,” said Piatakov. “Do you mind if I remove my jacket and tie?”
“Remove anything you like,” chuckled his host. “Down here, anything goes.”
During the next sixteen hours, Piatakov was given the grand tour: the huge files department, dark and dank as an underground mushroom farm, wherein were kept dossiers on more than 300 million Russians, alive and dead; the Executive Operations Section, where the staff planned black operations against the enemy; the Collection Directorate; the Information, Analysis, and Evaluation Directorate, which received and assessed field reports from intelligence agents and open sources; and all the other sections, departments, and directorates for which the KGB had been famed and feared for a hundred years.
Finally the two men passed a door supplied with a tumbler lock. Piatakov looked inquiringly at Ogarov.
The general hesitated. “Well, why not?” he said finally. “They told me to let you see everything. If you take out paid space tomorrow in Izvestia to tell what you saw, it’s their funeral.”
He dialed in the combination and swung open a steel door. Inside, a pale young man rose from a high stool before a filing cabinet and stood approximately at attention. He was barefoot, and clad in a pair of shorts.
“This is Piotr Petrovich, General. Piotr Petrovich, tell General Piatakov what keeps you locked up here like a mass rapist on death row.”
The young man turned, picked up a clipboard, and waited for General Ogarov to sign an official release. “This, sir,” said Piotr, sweeping his arm around the small room, “is the ‘Mole Hole.’ It is accessible only to my co-worker Dimitri and General Ogarov, for it contains the most sensitive secrets in the Soviet Union: the identity of our most important agents.”
General Ogarov, who was getting hungry, interrupted. “Piotr Petrovich, perhaps you could astound General Piatakov with a few examples of the family Talpidae burrowing into the soft underbelly of the bloated running dogs of Wall Street.”
Piotr Petrovich opened a drawer and removed four or five thick folders. “I get copies of all reports and insert them into the pertinent files. Here, for example, is the leader of the current majority in the Lok Sabha–India’s lower house of parliament, you know. A staunch ‘enemy’ of the Soviet Union.
“Here is another, the Canadian multimillionaire paper manufacturer, Mr. Caesar Lundquist. He is a patron of the arts, an intimate of the major politicians of both parties, and a noted peace activist. I’m afraid we’ll have to transfer him soon to the dead files, though.”
“Why?” asked Piatakov.
“He’s going to die. At eighty-three, his heart can’t stand the rigors of twice-weekly dialysis. Now, here is an interesting situation. This is an institution file, dealing with an important activity which affects the security of the Soviet Union. These five people whose pictures you see are all deeply involved in the project. They are William S. Grayle, Yussef Mansour, David D. Castle, Ripley Forte, and Jennifer Red Cloud. Any one of these five could sabotage this great project, on which the prosperity, perhaps even the survival, of the United States depends. We are therefore especially lucky, because we own one of them body and soul. Care to make a guess, General?”
General Piatakov examined the features of each closely and then placed his finger on the nose of one of the men.
“Wrong!” chortled Piotr Petrovich. “It’s this one.”
Ogarov and Piatakov lunched in the senior staff dining room, waited upon by young women who, though uniformly comely, went about their duties like zombies.
While waiting for their food, General Ogarov returned to the subject of his work. “Now, to get back to the problem of integrating GS-4 section with the Rapid Response Unit, I feel that…”
Piatakov was only half listening. His claustrophobia was beginning to assert itself, sitting at this little table in this little room with this little man. Room 101 was getting to him. The sooner he got out of here, the better he’d feel. This place was light-years from the real world, his world. He knew that even hourly doses of happy pills
wouldn’t prevent him from opening his veins after a week down here.
It was not until late in the evening that his inspection was complete. The inspection was far from comprehensive. One of the most important factors in determining Room 101 ‘s capacity for increased efficiency was the quality of the personnel, which would take an expert weeks of patient interviews to assess. But already Piatakov had come to some tentative conclusions, and he was eager to get back to his office to write them up and put this enlightening but disturbing day behind him. Next week he would be back on the ICBM test range beyond the Urals, and Room 101 would soon vanish from his thoughts.
Lieutenant General Ogarov accompanied him to the elevator. Piatakov had put on his necktie and donned his jacket and was thanking his host with an effusiveness he did not feel for his time and consideration, when the duty officer told him that Comrade Chairman Baliev wished to speak with him on the telephone before his departure.
Piatakov nodded and made the call from the duty officer’s desk.
“Chairman’s office,” a female voice said.
“This is Major General Piatakov, calling the Comrade Chairman as ordered.” Piatakov’s voice was steady, but his heart was beating like a hummingbird’s wings. A call from the chairman of the KGB could mean anything, but the timing was peculiar. Couldn’t whatever Comrade Baliev had to say wait until morning? What if–
“Baliev.”
“This is Piatakov, Comrade Chairman.”
“Ah, yes, Piatakov, thank you for calling. I have been quite disturbed, as you can well imagine, by the productivity decline in Room 101 and have been waiting all day to hear your recommendations. You are the expert, everyone tells me, and I’m sure what you have to suggest will be constructive.”
“That’s very flattering, sir. I have, of course, come to some very tentative conclusions, but they need reflection and refinement. I shall give you a provisional report by this time tomorrow, if that is acceptable.”
“Unfortunately, no. Tomorrow morning there will be a meeting of the Presidium, and Room 101 is on the agenda. I expect to get a lot of heat, and I’d like to have something in hand to douse the flames with. What can you tell me now?”
Piatakov considered. He could discuss Room 101’s problems in generalities, but generalities would not appease the Presidium. On the other hand, specifics implied a commitment, and he must be careful not to get in over his head, suggesting solutions Ogarov could not implement. But there were a few improvements he could recommend without reservation.
“Well, sir, one of the major difficulties is overcrowding, due to the antique system of retaining paper files. I’d recommend the immediate conversion of these files to laserdisk, and disposal of the originals. We would save 99.7 percent of the file space now employed and vastly facilitate retrieval. The process will, naturally, take years.”
“Noted. Go on.”
“I further recommend the installation of a fiber-optic system to transmit Room 101 ‘s reports and recommendations to the chairman’s office. The present system, though transmission lines are well guarded, is subject to possible interference or surveillance.”
“Good point. Anything else?”
“Well, sir, I don’t wish to seem critical, but I detect a severe morale problem, a malaise among the workers which I believe must be affecting their productivity. It cannot be cured with material incentives.”
“How can it be cured?”
“By extending their horizons, getting them more intimately involved in operations, getting feedback from the field on the results of the operations they have planned. At present, they formulate the plan, nurse it through channels, and that’s usually the last they hear of it. Above all, I’d like to see them be thinking on a strategic rather than a tactical plane. They plan mostly single, one-shot operations, usually without regard to their consequences on the Presidium’s grand strategy. If, furthermore, the results of an operation can somehow affect, improve, the quality of their own work, it would be a huge morale booster.”
“I don’t follow. How can this be done?”
Piatakov hadn’t the foggiest notion. Occasionally, under stress, his tongue ran away with his thoughts. But suddenly the recollection of the chaos of the information synthesis process and Ogarov’s comment on the inadequacy of the deciphering equipment provided inspiration.
“I intended to dilate on this subject in my report, sir. I need–”
“I need, General, and I need it now!”
“Very well, Comrade Chairman. You are aware of the capabilities of the American Brown-Ash Mark IX computer. If we could get one, a single Brown-Ash Mark IX could supply the Presidium with much faster analysis of Pentagon and State Department communications. With the same computer, we could rationalize the present chaotic and slow information processing now done in Room 101 with no less than seventeen computer systems of various types. Why, we could even pump in our meteorological data from Weather Central and get accurate forecasts for eight to twelve hours beyond what we get today. The air force would love us–you.”