Simultaneously, Suddler flinched and spun around as a thundering report echoed across the expanse of the square. By professional instinct the cameraman turned at once to the source of the sound, and after a moment’s wobble, the lens settled in on a ball of dust and smoke expanding up and away from the strangely modem building in the Kremlin’s otherwise Slavic Rococo complex. A second later the zoom lens darted in on the scene. Fully three floors of the building had been stripped of their glass curtain wall, and the camera followed a large conference table as it fell down off one floor slab that seemed to be dangling from a half dozen reinforcing rods. The camera went down to street level, where there was one obvious body, and perhaps another, along with a collection of automobiles crushed by debris.
In seconds, the whole square was filled with running men in uniform and the first of many official cars. A blurred figure that could only be a man in uniform suddenly blocked the camera lens. The tape stopped at that point, and Rich Suddler came back into the screen with a LIVE caption in the lower left corner.
“Now, at that point the militia captain who had been escorting us-the militia is the Soviet equivalent of, oh, like a U.S. state police force-he made us stop taping and confiscated our tape cassette. We weren’t allowed to tape the fire trucks or the several hundred armed troops who arrived and are now guarding the whole area. But the tape was just returned to us and we are able to give you this live picture of the building, now that the fires have been put out. In fairness I really can’t say that I blame him-things were pretty wild there for a few minutes.”
“Were you threatened in any way, Rich? I mean, did they act as though they thought you-”
Suddler’s head shook emphatically.
“Not at all, Dionna. In fact, more than anything they seemed concerned for our safety. In addition to the militia captain, we have a squad of Red Army infantrymen with us now, and their officer was very careful to say that he was here to protect us, not to threaten us. We were not allowed to approach the site of the incident, and of course we were not allowed to leave the area-but we wouldn’t have, anyway. The tape was just returned to us a few minutes ago, and we were informed that we’d be allowed to make this live broadcast.” The camera shifted to the building. “As you can see, there are roughly five hundred fire, police, and military personnel still here, sorting through the wreckage and looking for additional bodies, and just to our right is a Soviet TV news crew, doing the same thing we are.” Toland examined the television picture closely. The one body he could see looked awfully small. He wrote it off to distance and perspective.
“Dionna, what we seem to have here is the first major terrorist incident in the history of the Soviet Union-”
“Since the bastards set themselves up,” Toland snorted.
“We know for certain-at least we’ve been told-that a bomb was detonated in the Council of Ministers building. They’re certain it was a bomb, not some kind of accident. And we know for sure that three, possibly more people were killed, and perhaps as many as forty or fifty wounded.
“Now the really interesting thing about this is that the Politburo had been scheduled to hold a meeting here at about that time.”
“Holy shit!” Toland set the aerosol can on the night table, one hand still covered in shaving cream.
“Can you tell us if any of them were among the dead or wounded?” Dionna asked at once.
“No, Dionna. You see, we’re more than a quarter of a mile away, and the senior Kremlin officials arrive by car-when they do, that is, they come in from the other side of the fortress, through another gate. So, we never even knew that they were here, but the militia captain with our team did, and he kind of blurted it out. His exact words were, ‘My God, the Politburo’s in there!”‘
“Rich, can you tell us what the reaction in Moscow has been like?”
“It’s still pretty hard for us to gauge, Dionna, since we’ve been right here covering the story as it unfolds. The Kremlin Guards’ reaction is just what you might imagine-just like American Secret Service people would react, I supposed mixture of horror and rage, but I want to make it clear that that rage is not being directed against anyone, certainly not against Americans. I told the militia officer who’s been with us that I was in the U.S. Capitol building when the Weathermen’s bomb was set off, back in 1970, and he replied rather disgustedly that Communism was indeed catching up with capitalism, that the Soviet Union was growing a bumper crop of hooligans. It’s a measure of how seriously they’re taking this that a Soviet police officer would comment so openly on a subject that they’re not all that willing to discuss normally. So, if I had to pick one word to describe the reaction here, that word would be ‘shock.’
“So, to summarize what we know to this point, there has been a bombing incident within the Kremlin walls, possibly an attempt to eliminate the Soviet Politburo, though I must emphasize we are not certain of that. We have had it confirmed by police at the scene that at least three people are dead, with forty or so other wounded, those wounded being evacuated to nearby hospitals. We will be reporting throughout the day as more information becomes available. This is Rich Suddler, CNN, coming to you live from the Kremlin.” The scene shifted back to the anchor desk.
“And there you have it, another exclusive report from Cable Network News.” Dionna the anchorperson smiled, and the screen faded again, this time to a commercial for Lite Beer from Miller. Marty stood up and put on a robe.
“I’ll get the coffee going.”
“Holy shit,” Toland said again. He took longer than usual to shave, nicking himself twice as he kept looking in the mirror at his own eyes rather than his jawline. He dressed quickly, then looked in on his sleeping children. He decided against waking them.
Forty minutes later, he was in his car heading south, down U.S. 301, with his windows open, allowing cool night air to wash over him, and the car radio tuned to an all-news station. It was clear enough what was happening in the U.S. military. A bomb had been set off-probably a bomb in the Kremlin. Toland reminded himself that reporters hard up against deadlines, or TV types trying to score an instant scoop, often did not have the time to check things out. Maybe it was a gas main? Did Moscow have gas mains? If it were a bomb, he was sure the Soviets would instinctively think that the West had something to do with it, regardless of what that Suddler fellow thought, and go to higher alert status. The West would automatically do the same in anticipation of possible Soviet action. Nothing too obvious, nothing to provoke them further, mainly an exercise conducted by intelligence and surveillance types. The Soviets would understand that. That’s how the game was played, more from their side than from ours, Toland reflected, remembering assassination attempts against American presidents.
What if they really do think? Toland wondered. No, he decided, they had to know that no one was that crazy. Didn’t they?
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
He drove for another three hours, wishing that he’d drunk more coffee and less wine, and listening to his car radio to stay awake. He arrived just after seven, the normal beginning of the day’s work. He was surprised to find Colonel Lowe at his desk.
“I don’t report to Lejeune until Tuesday, so I decided to come in and take a look at this. How was the drive?”
“I made it alive-that’s about all I can say. What’s happening?”
“You’ll love it.” Lowe held up a telex sheet. “We pirated this off the Reuters wire half an hour ago, and CIA confirms-meaning they probably stole it, too-that the KGB has arrested one Gerhardt Falken, a West German national, and accused him of setting off a bomb in the fuckin’ Kremlin!” The Marine let out a long breath. “He missed the big shots, but now they’re saying that among the victims are six Young Octobrists -from Pskov, by God!-who were making a presentation to the Politburo. Kids. There’s going to be hell to pay.”
Toland shook his head. It couldn’t get much worse than that. “And they say a German did it?”
“A West German,” Lowe corrected. “NATO intel services are already going ape trying to run him down. The official Soviet statement gives his name and address-some suburb of Bremen-and business, a small import-export house. Nothing else yet on that subject, but the Russian Foreign Ministry did go on to say that they expect ‘this despicable act of international terrorism’ to have no effect on the Vienna Arms Talks, that while they do not believe at this time that Falken was acting on his own, they ‘have no wish’ to believe that we had anything to do with it.”