Ach so. “You were struck by a car and you are now in a military hospital,” the man lied. They were still in Aachen, near the German-Belgian frontier.
“What . . . I was just coming out to-” The major’s voice was that of a drunken man, but it stopped abruptly. His eyes tried to focus properly.
“It is all finished for you, my friend.” Now the speaker switched to German. “We know you are a Soviet officer, and you were found in possession of classified government documents. Tell me, what is your interest in Lammersdorf?”
“I have nothing to say,” replied “Baum” in German.
“A little late for that,” the interrogator chided, switching back to Russian. “But we’ll make it easy for you. The surgeon tells us that it is now safe to try a new, ah, medication for you, and you will tell us everything you know. Be serious. No one can resist this form of questioning. You might also wish to consider your position,” the man said more harshly. “You are an officer in the army of a foreign government, here in the Federal Republic illegally, traveling with false papers, and in possession of secret documents. At the least, we can imprison you for life. But, given what your government is doing at the moment, we are not concerned with ‘least’ measures. If you cooperate you will live, and probably be exchanged back to the Soviet Union at a later date for a German agent. We will even say that we got all our information due to the use of drugs; no harm could possibly come to you from this. If you do not cooperate, you will die of injuries received in a motor accident.”
“I have a family,” Major Andre Chernyavin said quietly, trying to remember his duty. The combination of fear and drug-induced haze made a hash of his emotions. He couldn’t tell there was a vial of sodium pentothol dripping into his IV line, and already impairing his higher brain functions. Soon he would be unable to consider the long-term consequences of his action. Only the here and now would matter.
“They will come to no harm,” Colonel Weber promised. An Army officer assigned to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, he had interrogated many Soviet agents. “Do you think they punish the family of every spy we catch? Soon no one would ever come here to spy on us at all.” Weber allowed his voice to soften. The drugs were beginning to take effect, and as the stranger’s mind became hazy he would be gentle, cajoling the information from him. The funny part, he mused, was that he’d been instructed on how to do this by a psychiatrist. Despite the many movies about brutal German interrogators, he hadn’t had the least training in a forceful extraction of information. Too bad, he thought. If there was ever a time I need it, it is now. Most of the colonel’s family lived outside Kulmbach, only a few kilometers from the border.
KIEV, THE UKRAINE
“Captain Ivan Mikhailovich Sergetov reporting as ordered, Comrade General.”
“Be seated, Comrade Captain.” The resemblance to his father was remarkable, Alekseyev thought. Short and stocky. The same proud eyes, the same intelligence. Another young man on his way up. “Your father tells me that you are an honor student in Middle East languages.”
“This is correct, Comrade General.”
“Have you also studied the people who speak them?”
“That is an integral part of the curriculum, Comrade.” The younger Sergetov smiled. “We’ve even had to read through the Koran. It is the only book most of them have ever read, and therefore an important factor in understanding the savages.”
“You do not like the Arabs, then?”
“Not particularly. But our country must do business with them. I get along with them well enough. My class will occasionally meet with diplomats from politically acceptable countries to practice our language skills. Mainly Libya, and occasionally people from Yemen and Syria.”
“You have three years in tanks. Can we defeat the Arabs in battle?”
“The Israelis have done so with ease, and they don’t have a fraction of our resources. The Arab soldier is an illiterate peasant, poorly trained and led by incompetent officers.”
A young man with all the answers. And perhaps you will explain Afghanistan to me? Alekseyev thought. “Comrade Captain, you will be attached to my personal staff for the forthcoming operation against the Persian Gulf states. I will lean on you for linguistic work, and to support our intelligence estimates. I understand that you are training to be a diplomat. That is useful to me. I always like to have a second opinion of the intelligence data that KGB and GRU send us. Not that I distrust our comrades in the intelligence arms, you understand. I simply like to have someone who thinks ‘Army’ to review the data. The fact that you’ve served in tanks is doubly valuable to me. One more question. How are the reservists reacting to the mobilization?”
“With enthusiasm, of course,” the captain replied.
“Ivan Mikhailovich, I presume your father told you about me. I listen attentively to the words of our Party, but soldiers preparing for battle need to know the unvarnished truth so that we can bring about the Party’s wishes.”
Captain Sergetov noted how carefully that had been phrased. “Our people are angry, Comrade General. They are enraged over the incident in the Kremlin, the murder of the children. I think ‘enthusiasm’ is not a great exaggeration.”
“And you, Ivan Mikhailovich?”
“Comrade General, my father told me that you would ask this question. He told me to assure you that he had no prior knowledge of it, and that the important thing is to safeguard our country so that similar tragedies will never again be necessary.”
Alekseyev did not reply at once. He was chilled by the knowledge that Sergetov had read his mind three days before, and dumbfounded that he had confided so enormous a secret to his son. But it was good to know that he had not misread the Politburo man. He was a man to be trusted. Perhaps his son also? Mikhail Eduardovich evidently thought so.
“Comrade Captain, these are things to be forgotten. We have enough to occupy us already. You will work down the hall in room twenty-two. There is work waiting for you. Dismissed.”
BONN, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY
“It’s all a sham,” Weber reported to the Chancellor four hours later. The helicopter he’d flown to Bonn hadn’t even left the ground yet. “The whole bomb-plot business is all a cruel and deliberate sham.”
“We know that, Colonel,” the Chancellor replied testily. He’d been awake for two days straight now, trying to come to grips with the sudden German-Russian crisis.
“Herr Kanzler, the man we now have in the hospital is Major Andre Ilych Chernyavin. He entered the country over the Czech border two weeks ago with a separate set of false papers. He is an officer in the Soviet Spetznaz forces, their elite Sturmtruppen. He was badly injured in an auto accident-the fool stepped right in front of an automobile without looking-and was carrying a complete diagram for the NATO communications base at Lammersdorf. The station’s security posts were just relocated a month ago. This document is only two weeks old. He also has the watch schedule and a roster of watch officers-and that is only three days old! He and a team of ten men came over the Czech border, and only just got their operational orders. His current orders are to attack the base exactly at midnight, the day after receipt of his alert signal. There is also a cancellation signal should plans change. We have them both.”
“He came into Germany long before-” The Chancellor was surprised in spite of himself. The entire affair was so unreal.
“Exactly. It all fits, Herr Kanzler. For whatever reason, Ivan is coming to attack Germany. Everything to this point was a sham, all designed to put us to sleep. Here is a full transcript of our interview with Chernyavin. He has knowledge of four other Spetznaz operations, all of them consistent with a full-scale assault across our borders. He is now at our military hospital in Koblenz under heavy guard. We also have a videotape of his admission.”
“What of the chance that this is all some sort of Russian provocation? Why weren’t these documents brought over when they crossed the border?”
“The reconstruction of the Lammersdorf installation meant that they needed correct information. As you know, we’ve been upgrading the security measures at our NATO communications stations since last summer, and our Russian friends must have been updating their assault plans as well. The fact that they have these documents at all-just days old, some of them-is most frightening. As for how we happened to get hold of this man-” Weber explained the circumstances of the accident. “We have every reason to believe that it was a genuine accident, not a provocation. The driver, a Madame Anne-Marie LeCourte, is a fashion agent-she sells dresses for some Paris designer or other; not a likely cover for a Soviet spy. And why do such a thing? Do they expect us to launch an attack into the DDR based on this? First they accuse us of bombing the Kremlin, then try to provoke us? It’s not logical. What we have here is a man whose mission is to prepare the way for a Soviet invasion of Germany by paralyzing NATO communication links immediately before hostilities commence.”