“Cute. It’s going to be a shame to lose you back to your regiment, Chuck. You have such a nice way of finding the important quotes.”
“Commander, we just might need that regiment soon. This whole thing smells like dead fish to me. Last night: the final film in the Eisenstein film festival, Alexander Nevsky, a new digitalized print, a new soundtrack-and what’s the message? ‘Arise, ye Russian people,’ the Germans are coming! This morning, we have six dead Russian kids, from Pskov and a German is supposed to have planted the bomb. The only thing that doesn’t fit is that it ain’t exactly subtle.”
“Maybe,” Toland said speculatively. He spoke like a halfhearted devil’s advocate. “You think we could sell this combination of factors to the papers or anybody in Washington? It’s too crazy, too coincidental-what if it is subtle, but backwards subtle? Besides, the object of the exercise wouldn’t be to convince us, it would be to convince their own citizens. You could say it works both ways. That make sense, Chuck?”
Lowe nodded. “Enough to check out. Let’s do some sniffing around. First thing, I want you to call CNN in Atlanta and find out how long this Suddler guy’s been trying to tape his story about the Kremlin. How much lead time did he have, when was this approved, who he worked through to get it, and if someone other than his regular press contact finally did approve it.”
“Setup.” Toland said it out loud. He wondered if they were being clever-or clinically paranoid. He knew what most people would think.
“You can’t smuggle a Penthouse into Russia without using the diplomatic bag, and now we’re supposed to believe a German smuggled a bomb in? Then tries to blow up the Politburo?”
“Could we do it?” Toland wondered aloud.
“If CIA was crazy enough to try it? God, that’s more than just crazy.” Lowe shook his head. “I don’t think anybody could do it, even the Russians themselves. It’s got to be a layered defense. X-ray machines. Sniffer dogs. A couple of hundred guards, all from three different commands, the Army, KGB, MVD, probably their militia, too. Hell, Bob, you know how paranoid they are against their own people. How do you suppose they feel about Germans?”
“So they can’t say he was a crazy operating on his own.”
“Which leaves . . .”
“Yeah.” Toland reached for his phone to call CNN.
KIEV, THE UKRAINE
“Children!” Alekseyev barely said aloud. “For our maskirovka the Party murders children! Our own children. What have we come to?”
What have I come to? If I can rationalize the judicial murder of our colonels and some privates, why shouldn’t the Politburo blow up a few children . . . ? Alekseyev told himself there was a difference.
His General was also pale as he switched off the television set. “‘Arise, ye Russian people. We must set these thoughts aside, Pasha. It is hard, but we must. The State is not perfect, but it is the State we must serve.”
Alekseyev eyed his commander closely. The General had almost choked on those words; he was already practicing how to use them on the crucial few who would know of this outrage, yet had to perform their duties as though it never existed. There will come a day of reckoning, Pasha told himself, a day of reckoning for all the crimes committed in the name of Socialist Progress. He wondered if he’d live to see it and decided he probably wouldn’t.
MOSCOW, R.S.F.S.R.
The Revolution has come to this, he thought. Sergetov was staring into the rubble. The sun was still high, even this late in the afternoon. The firefighters and soldiers were almost finished sorting through the wreckage, heaving the loose pieces into trucks a few meters from where he stood. There was dust on his suit. I’ll have to have it cleaned, he thought, watching the seventh small body being lifted with a gentleness all too late and obscenely out of place. One more child was still unaccounted for, and there was still some lingering hope. A uniformed Army medic stood nearby, unwrapped dressings in his quivering hands. To his left a major of infantry was weeping with rage. A man with a family, no doubt.
The television cameras were there, of course. A lesson learned from the American media, Sergetov thought, the crews poking their way into the action to record every horrible scene for the evening news. He was surprised to see an American crew with their Soviet counterparts. So, we have made mass murder an international spectator sport.
Sergetov was far too angry for visible emotion. That could have been me, he thought. I always show up early for the Thursday meetings. Everyone knows it. The guards, the clerical staff, and certainly my Comrades on the Politburo. So this is the penultimate segment of the maskirovka. To motivate, to lead our people, we must do this. Was there supposed to be a Politburo member in the rubble? he wondered. A junior member, of course.
Surely I am wrong, Sergetov told himself. One part of his mind examined the question with chilling objectivity while another considered his personal friendships with some of the senior Politburo members. He didn’t know what to think. An odd position for a leader of the Party.
NORFOLK, VIRGINIA
“I am Gerhardt Falken,” the man said. “I entered the Soviet Union six days ago through the port of Odessa. I have been for ten years an agent of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the intelligence apparat of the government of West Germany. My assignment was to kill the Politburo at its Thursday-morning session by means of a bomb placed in a storage room directly beneath the fourth-floor conference room in which they meet.” Lowe and Toland watched their televisions in total fascination. It was perfect. “Falken” spoke perfect Russian, with the precise syntax and diction that schoolteachers in the Soviet Union sought to achieve. His accent was that of Leningrad.
“I have run an import-export business in Bremen for many years, and I have specialized in trade with the Soviet Union. I have traveled into the Soviet Union many times, and on many of these occasions I have used my business identity to run agents whose mission was to weaken and spy upon the Soviet Party and military infrastructures.”
The camera closed in. “Falken” was reading in a monotone from a script, his eyes seldom rising to the cameras. Behind the glasses on one side was a large bruise. His hands shook slightly when he changed pages of the script.
“Looks like they beat up on him some,” Lowe observed.
“Interesting,” Toland replied. “They’re letting us know that they work people over.”
Lowe snorted. “A guy who blows little kids up? You can burn the bastard at the stake, and who’ll give a good Goddamn? Some serious thought went into this, my friend.”
“I wish to make it clear,” Falken went on in a firmer voice, “that I had no intention of injuring children. The Politburo was a legitimate political target, but my country does not make war on children.”
A howl of disgust came from off-camera. As though on cue, the camera backed away to reveal a pair of uniformed KGB officers flanking the speaker, their faces impassive. The audience was composed of about twenty people in civilian clothes.
“Why did you come into our country?” demanded one of them.
“I have told you this.”
“Why does your country wish to kill the leaders of our Soviet Party?”
“I am a spy,” Falken replied. “I carry out assignments. I do not ask such questions. I follow my orders.”
“How were you captured?”
“I was arrested at the Kiev Railroad Station. How I was caught they have not told me.”
“Cute,” Lowe commented.
“He called himself a spy,” Toland objected. “You don’t say that. You call yourself an ‘officer.’ An ‘agent’ is a foreigner who works for you, and a ‘spy’ is a bad guy. They use the same terms that we do.”
The CIA/DIA report arrived on the telex printer an hour later. Gerhardt Eugen Falken. Age forty-four. Born in Bonn. Educated in public schools, good marks on his records-but his picture was missing from his high school yearbook. Military service as a draftee in a transport battalion whose records had been destroyed in a barracks fire twelve years before, honorable discharge found in his personal effects. University degree in liberal arts, good marks, but again no picture, and three professors who gave him B grades can’t seem to recall him. A small import-export business. Where did the money come from to start it? Nobody could answer that one. Lived in Bremen quietly, modestly, and alone. Friendly man, after a fashion. Always nodded to his neighbors, but never socialized with them. A good-“very correct,” his elderly secretary said-boss to his employees. Traveled a lot. In short, many people knew he existed, quite a few did business with his firm, but nobody really knew a thing about him.