“Go on.” The dark eyes softened slightly, merely simmering rather than dangerously hostile.
“America cannot deploy its divisions from Europe. They are contaminated. The same is true of their heavy divisions in America. So we will face the Saudis first of all. It will be a great battle, which we shall win. The rump states will surrender to us, or be crushed–and then
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Kuwait will stand alone, at the top of the Gulf, with its own forces and this American regiment, and then we shall see about that. They probably expect us to invade Kuwait first. We will not repeat that error, will we?”
“And if they reinforce the Saudis?”
“Again, they have the equipment for but one brigade in the Kingdom. The second is afloat. You talked to India about that, did you not?” It was so normal that he might have predicted it, the chief UIR spook thought behind outwardly cowed eyes. They always got nervous just before things started, as though expecting everyone to follow the script they’d written. The enemy was the enemy. He didn’t always cooperate. “And I doubt they have the troops to move. Aircraft, perhaps, but there is no carrier within ten thousand kilometers, and aircraft, though they are an annoyance, can neither take nor hold ground.”
“Thank you for making that clear.” The old man’s mood softened.
“AT LAST WE meet, Comrade Colonel,” Golovko said to the CIA officer.
Clark had always wondered if he’d see the inside of KGB headquarters. He’d never quite expected to be offered drinks there in the Chairman’s office. Early in the morning or not, he took a slug of the Starka-brand vodka. “Your hospitality is not what I was trained to expect, Comrade Chairman.”
“We don’t do that here anymore. Lefortovo Prison is more convenient.” He paused, set down his glass, and switched back to tea. A drink with the man was mandatory, but it was early in the day. “I must ask. Was it you who brought Madam Gerasimov and the girl out?”
Clark nodded. There was nothing to be gained from lying to the man. “Yes, that was me.”
“You are welcome to all three of them, Ivan . . . your father’s name?”
“Timothy. I am Ivan Timofeyevich, Sergey Niko-lay’ch.”
“Ah.” Golovko had a good laugh. “As hard as the
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Cold War was, my friend, it is good now, at the end of it, to see old enemies. Fifty years from now, when all of us are dead, historians will compare CIA records with ours, and they will decide who won the intelligence war. Have you any idea what they will decide?”
“You forget, I was a foot soldier, not a commander, for most of it.”
“Our Major Scherenko was impressed with you and your young partner here. Your rescue of Koga was impressive. And now we will work together again. Have you been briefed in?”
For Chavez, who’d come to manhood watching Rambo movies, and whose early Army training had taught him to expect going head-to-head with the Soviets at any time, it was an experience which he wanted to ascribe to jet lag, though both CIA officers had noted how empty the corridors were for their passage. There was no sense letting them see faces they might remember in some other time and some other place.
“No, mainly we’ve been gathering information.”
Golovko hit a button on his desk. “Is Bondarenko here?” A few seconds later, the door opened, revealing a senior Russian general officer.
Both Americans stood. Clark read the medals and gave the man a hard look. Bondarenko did the same. The handshakes exchanged were wary, curious, and strangely warm. They were of an age, raised in one, growing into another.
“Gennady losefovich is chief of operations. Ivan Tim-ofeyevich is a CIA spy,” the Chairman explained. “As is his quiet young partner. Tell me, Clark, the plague, it comes from Iran?”
“Yes, that is certain.”
“Then he is a barbarian, but a clever one. General?”
“Last night you moved your cavalry regiment from Israel to Kuwait,” Bondarenko said. “They are fine troops, but the correlation of forces is adverse in the extreme. Your country cannot deploy large numbers of troops for at least two weeks. He will not give you two weeks. We estimate that the heavy divisions southeast of Baghdad wili
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be ready to move in three days, four at the most. One day for the approach march to the border area, and then? Then we will see what their plan is.”
“Any thoughts?”
“We have no more intelligence on this than you do,” Golovko said. “Regrettably, most of our assets in the area have been shot, and the generals we befriended in the previous Iraqi regime have left the country.”
“The high command of the army is Iranian, many were trained in Britain or America under the Shah as junior officers, and they survived the purges,” Bondarenko said. “We have dossiers on many of them, and these are being transmitted to the Pentagon.”
“That’s very cordial of you.”
“You bet,” Ding observed. “If they dust us off, next they come north.”
“Alliances, young man, do not occur for reasons of love, but from mutual interests,” Golovko agreed.
“If you cannot deal with this maniac today, then we will have to deal with him in three years,” Bondarenko said seriously. “Better today, I think, for all of us.”
“We have offered our support to Foleyeva. She has accepted. When you learn your mission, let us know, and we will see what we can do.”
SOME WOULD LAST longer than others. Some would last less. The first recorded death happened in Texas, a golf-equipment representative who expired due to heart complications three days after being admitted, one day after his wife entered the hospital with her own symptoms. Doctors interviewing her determined that she’d probably contracted the disease by cleaning up after her husband had vomited in the bathroom, not from any intimate contact, because he’d felt too ill even to kiss her after returning from Phoenix. Though seemingly an insignificant conclusion from obvious data, it was faxed to Atlanta, as the CDC had requested all possible information, however minor it might seem. It certainly seemed minor to the medical team in Dallas. The first death for them was both a relief and a horror. A relief because the man’s condition
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toward the end was both hopeless and agonizing; a horror, because there would be others just as vile, only longer in coming.
The same thing happened six hours later in Baltimore. The Winnebago dealer had a preexisting GI complaint, peptic ulcer disease, which, though controlled by an over-the-counter medication, gave Ebola an easy target. His stomach lining disintegrated, and the patient rapidly bled out while unconscious with his massive dose of painkillers. This, too, came as something of a surprise to the attending physician and nurse. Soon thereafter more deaths started occurring nationwide. The media reported them, and the country’s horror deepened. In the first series of cases, the husband died first, with the wife soon to follow. In many similar cases, children would be next.
It was more real for everyone now. For most, the crisis had seemed a distant event. Businesses and schools were closed, and travel was restricted, but the rest of it was a TV event, as things tended to be in Western countries. It was something you saw on a phosphor screen, a moving image augmented by sound, something both real and not. But now the word death was being used with some frequency. Photos of the victims appeared on the screens, in some cases home videos, and the moving pictures of people now dead, their private pasts revealed in moments of pleasure and relaxation, followed by the somber words of reporters who were themselves becoming as familiar as family members–it all entered the public consciousness with an immediacy that was as new and different as it was horrid. It was no longer the sort of nightmare from which one awoke. It was one which went on and on, seeming to grow, like the child’s dream in which a black cloud entered a room, growing and growing, approaching despite all attempts at evasion, and you knew that if it touched you, you were lost.
Grumbles about the federally imposed travel restrictions died the same day as the golfer in Texas and the recreational vehicle dealer in Maryland. Interpersonal contact, which had first been cut way back, then started to grow again, was restricted to the family-member level. People lived on telephones now. Long-distance lines were
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jammed with calls to ascertain the well-being of relatives and friends, to the point that AT&T, MCI, and the rest ran commercial messages requesting that such calls be kept short, and special-access lines were set aside for government and medical use. There was a true national panic now, though it was a quiet, personal one. There were no public demonstrations. Traffic on the streets was virtually nil in the major cities. People even stopped heading for supermarkets, and instead stayed at home, living out of cans or freezers for the time being.