“To kill him?” Ustinov asked.
“Yes, Dmitriy.”
“What are the dangers of that?” the Foreign Minister asked at once. Diplomats always worried about such things.
“We cannot entirely eliminate them, but we can control them. My people have come up with an operational concept, which would involve shooting the Pope at one of his public appearances. I have brought my aide, Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy, to brief us in on it. With your permission, comrades?” He received a collection of nods. Then he turned his head: “Aleksey Nikolay’ch?”
“Comrades.” The colonel rose and walked to the lectern, trying to keep his shaking knees under control. “The operation has no name, and will have none for security reasons. The Pope appears in public every Wednesday afternoon. He generally parades around Saint Peter’s Square in a motor vehicle, which offers him no protection against attack and comes within three or four meters of the assembled multitude.” Rozhdestvenskiy had chosen his words carefully. Every man at the table knew biblical matters and terminology. You could not grow up, even here, without acquiring knowledge of Christianity—even if it was just enough to despise everything about it.
“The question then is how to get a man with a pistol to the front rank of spectators, so that he can take his shot at sufficiently close range to make a successful shot likely.”
“Not ‘certain’?” the Minister of the Interior asked harshly.
Rozhdestvenskiy did his best not to wilt. “Comrade Minister, we rarely deal in absolute certainties. Even a skilled pistol shot cannot guarantee a perfect shot against a moving target, and the tactical realities here will not allow a carefully aimed round. The assassin will have to bring his weapon up rapidly from a place of concealment, and fire. He will be able to get off two, possibly three, shots before the crowd collapses on him. At that point, a second officer will then kill the assassin from behind with a silenced pistol—and then make his own escape. This will leave no one behind to speak to the Italian police. For this, we will use our Bulgarian socialist allies to select the assassin, to get him to the scene, and then to eliminate him.”
“How will our Bulgarian friend get away under these circumstances?” Brezhnev asked. His personal knowledge of firearms allowed him to skip over technical issues, Andropov saw.
“It is likely that the crowd will concentrate on the assassin, and will not take note of the intelligence officer’s follow-up shot. It will be virtually silent and there will be a great deal of crowd noise. He will then simply back away and make his escape,” Rozhdestvenskiy explained. “The officer we want on this is well experienced in operations of this kind.”
“Does he have a name?” Alexandrov asked.
“Yes, comrade, and I can give it to you if you wish, but for security reasons…”
“Correct, Colonel,” Ustinov put in. “We do not really need to know his name, do we, comrades?” Heads shook around the table. For these men, secrecy came as naturally as urination.
“Not a rifleman?” Interior asked.
“That would risk exposure. The buildings around the square are patrolled by the Vatican’s own security force, Swiss mercenaries, and—”
“How good are these Swiss militiamen?” another voice asked.
“How good do they need to be to see a man with a rifle and to raise an alarm?” Rozhdestvenskiy asked, reasonably. “Comrades, when you plan an operation like this one, you try to keep the variables under strict control. Complexity is a dangerous enemy in any such undertaking. As planned, all we need to do is to insert two men into a crowd of thousands and get them close. Then it’s just a matter of taking the shot. A pistol is easily concealed in loose clothing. The people there are not screened or searched in any way. No, comrades, this plan is the best we can establish—unless you would have us dispatch a platoon of Spetsnaz soldiers into the Vatican Apartments. That would obviously work, but the origin of such an operation would be impossible to conceal. This mission, if it comes off, depends only on two people, only one of whom will survive, and who will almost certainly escape cleanly.”
“How reliable are the participants?” the Chairman of the Party Control Commission asked.
“The Bulgarian officer has personally killed eight men, and he has good contacts within the Turkish criminal community, from which he will select our assassin.”
“A Turk?” the Party man asked.
“Yes, a Muslim,” Andropov confirmed. “If the operation can be blamed on a Turkish follower of Mohammed, so much the better for us. Correct?”
“It would not hurt our purposes,” the Foreign Minister confirmed. “In fact, it might well have the effect of making Islam look more barbaric to the West. That would cause America to increase its support for Israel, and that would annoy the Muslim countries from whom they buy their oil. There is an elegance to it all, which appeals to me, Yuriy.”
“So, the complexity of the operation is entirely limited to its consequences,” Marshal Ustinov observed, “and not to the undertaking itself.”
“Correct, Dmitriy,” Andropov confirmed.
“What are the chances that this operation might be linked to us?” asked the Ukrainian Party Secretary.
“If all we leave behind is a dead Turk, connections will be very difficult to establish,” the KGB Chairman replied. “This operation has no name. The number of people involved is less than twenty, and most of them are in this room, right here. There will be no written records. Comrades, the security of this operation will be absolute. I must insist that none of you speak about this to anyone. Not your wives, not your private secretaries, not your political advisers. In that way, we can ensure against leaks. We must remember that the Western intelligence services are always trying to discover our secrets. In this case, that cannot be allowed to happen.”
“You should have limited this discussion to the Defense Counsel,” Brezhnev thought aloud.
“Leonid Ilyich, I thought of that,” Andropov responded. “But the political implications of this matter command attention by the entire Politburo.”
“Yes, I can see that,” the General Secretary agreed with a nod. What he did not see was that Andropov had carefully followed this course so as not to be seen as an adventurer by the men who would someday soon elect him to his own head chair. “Very well, Yuriy. I cannot object to that,” Brezhnev said thoughtfully.
“It’s still a dangerous thing to contemplate,” said the Secretary of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. “I must say that I am not entirely comfortable with this plan.”
“Gregoriy Vasil’yevich,” the Ukrainian Party boss responded, “about Poland—if their government falls, there will be consequences for me that I do not find attractive. Nor should you,” he warned. “If this Pole returns home, the results could be ruinous to all of us.”
“I understand that, but murder of a chief of state is nothing to be undertaken lightly. I think we ought to warn him first. There are ways to get his attention.”
The Minister for Foreign Affairs shook his head. “I’ve already said it—a waste of time. Men like this do not understand what death is. We could threaten his church members in the Warsaw Pact, but that would probably only have the opposite effect of what we desire. It would give us the worst of all worlds, the consequences of attacking the Roman Church without the option of eliminating this troublesome churchman. No.” He shook his head. “If it is to be done, then it must be done properly, decisively, and speedily. Yuriy Vladimirovich, how long to accomplish this mission?”
“Colonel Rozhdestvenskiy?” the KGB Chairman asked.
All heads turned to the colonel, and he did his best to keep his voice level. This was very deep water for a mere colonel. The entire operation now rested on his shoulders, a possibility he had somehow never fully considered. But if he was to get his general’s stars, he had to take this responsibility, didn’t he?
“Comrade Minister, I would estimate four to six weeks, if you authorize the operation today, and so notify the Bulgarian Politburo. We will be using one of their assets, for which their permission is necessary.”
“Andrey Andreyevich?” Brezhnev asked. “How cooperative will they be in Sofia?”
The Foreign Minister took a moment. “That depends on what we ask them and how we ask it. If they know the purpose of the operation, they might dally somewhat.”
“Can we ask their cooperation without telling them what it is for?” Ustinov asked.
“Yes, I think so. We can just offer them a hundred new tanks or some fighter aircraft, as a gesture of socialist solidarity,” the Minister for Foreign Affairs suggested.
“Be generous,” Brezhnev agreed. “I’m sure they have a request floating in the Defense Ministry, yes, Dmitriy?”
“Always!” Marshal Ustinov confirmed. “It’s all they ever ask for, more tanks and more MiGs!”