Morning came slowly to Moscow. The traffic sounds of trolley cars and the deeper rumble of truck diesels were muted by the snow cover, and Ryan’s window didn’t face in the proper direction to catch the first light of dawn. What had been gray began to acquire color, as though a child were playing with the controls on a color television. Jack finished his third cup of coffee, and set down the book he’d been reading at seven-thirty. Timing was everything on occasions like this, Candela told him. He made a final trip to the bathroom before dressing for his morning walk.
The sidewalks had been swept clean of the Sunday-night snowstorm, though there were still piles at the curbs. Ryan nodded to the security guards, Australian, American, and Russian, before turning north on Chaykovskogo. The bitter northerly wind made his eyes water, and he adjusted the scarf around his neck slightly as he walked toward Vosstaniya Square. This was Moscow’s embassy district. The previous morning he’d turned right at the far side of the square and seen half a dozen legations mixed together randomly, but this morning he turned left on Kudrinskiy Pereulok—the Russians had at least nine ways of saying “street,” but the nuances were lost on Jack—then right, then left again on Barrikadnaya.
“Barricade” seemed an odd name for both a street and a movie theater. It looked odder still in Cyrillic lettering. The B was recognizable, though the Cyrillic “B” is actually a V, and the Rs in the word looked like Roman Ps. Jack altered his course somewhat, walking as close to the buildings as possible as he approached. Just as expected, a door opened and he turned into it. Again he was patted down. The security man found the sealed envelope in the coat pocket, but didn’t open it, to Ryan’s relief.
“Come.” The same thing he’d said the first time, Jack noted. Perhaps he had a limited vocabulary.
Gerasimov was sitting on an aisle seat, his back confidently to Ryan as Jack walked down the slope to see the man.
“Good morning,” he said to the back of the man’s head.
“How do you like our weather?” Gerasimov asked, waving the security man away. He stood and led Jack down toward the screen.
“Wasn’t this cold where I grew up.”
“You should wear a hat. Most Americans prefer not to, but here it is a necessity.”
“It’s cold in New Mexico, too,” Ryan said.
“So I’m told. Did you think I would do nothing?” the KGB Chairman asked. He did so without emotion, like a teacher to a slow student. Ryan decided to let him enjoy the feeling for a moment.
“Am I supposed to negotiate with you for Major Gregory’s freedom?” Jack asked neutrally—or tried to. The extra morning coffee had put an edge on his emotions.
“If you wish,” Gerasimov replied.
“I think you will find this to be of interest.” Jack handed over the envelope.
The KGB Chairman opened it and took out the photographs. He didn’t display any reaction as he flipped through the three frames, but when he turned to look at Ryan his eyes made the morning’s wind seem like the breath of spring.
“One’s alive,” Jack reported. “He’s hurt, but he’ll recover. I don’t have his picture. Somebody screwed up on that end. We have Gregory back, unhurt.”
“I see.”
“You should also see that your options are now those which we intended. I need to know which choice you will make.”
“It is obvious, is it not?”
“One of the things I have learned in studying your country is that nothing is as obvious as we would like.” That drew something that was almost a smile.
“How will I be treated?”
“Quite well.” A hell of lot better than you deserve.
“My family?”
“Them also.”
“And how do you propose to get the three of us out?”
“I believe your wife is Latvian by birth, and that she often travels to her home. Have them there Friday night,” Ryan said, continuing with some details.
“Exactly what—”
“You do not need that information, Mr. Gerasimov.”
“Ryan, you cannot—”
“Yes, sir, I can,” Jack cut him off, wondering why he’d said “sir.”
“And for me?” the Chairman asked. Ryan told him what he’d have to do. Gerasimov agreed. “I have one question.”
“Yes?”
“How did you fool Platonov? He’s a very clever man.”
“There really was a minor flap with the SEC, but that wasn’t the important part.” Ryan got ready to leave. “We couldn’t have done it without you. We had to stage a really good scene, something that you don’t fake. Congressmen Trent was over here six months ago, and he met a fellow named Valeriy. They got to be very close friends. He found out later that you gave Valeriy five years for ‘antisocial activity.’ Anyway, he wanted to get even. We asked for his help and he jumped at it. So I suppose you could say that we used your own prejudices against you.”
“What would you have us do with such people, Ryan?” the Chairman demanded. “Do you—”
“I don’t make laws, Mr. Gerasimov.” Ryan walked out. It was nice, he thought on the return to the embassy compound, to have the wind at his back for a change.
“Good morning, Comrade General Secretary.” “You need not be so formal, Ilya Arkadyevich. There are Politburo members more senior to you who do not have the vote, and we have been comrades too . . . long. What is troubling you?” Narmonov asked cautiously. The pain in his colleague’s eyes was evident. They were scheduled to talk about the winter wheat crop, but—
“Andrey Il’ych, I do not know how to begin.” Vaneyev nearly choked on the words, and tears began to stream from his eyes. “It is my daughter . . .” He went on for ten fitful minutes.
“And?” Narmonov asked, when it seemed that he’d finally stopped—but as was obvious, there had to be more. There was.
“Alexandrov and Gerasimov, then.” Narmonov leaned back in his chair and stared at the wall. “It took great courage indeed for you to come to me with this, my friend.”
“I cannot let them—even if it means my career, Andrey, I cannot let them stop you now. You have too many things to do, we—you have too many things to change. I must leave. I know that. But you must stay, Andrey. The people need you here if we are to accomplish anything.”
It was noteworthy that he’d said people rather than Party, Narmonov thought. The times really were changing. No. He shook his head. It wasn’t that, not yet. All he had accomplished was to create the atmosphere within which the times might have the possibility of change. Vaneyev was one who understood that the problem was not so much goals as process. Every Politburo member knew—had known for years— the things that needed to be changed. It was the method of change that no one could agree on. It was like turning a ship to a new course, he thought, but knowing that the rudder might break if you did so. Continuing in the same path would allow the ship to plow on into . . . what? Where was the Soviet Union heading? They didn’t even know that. But to change course meant risk, and if the rudder broke—if the Party lost its ascendancy—then there would be only chaos. That was a choice that no rational man would wish to face, but it was a choice whose necessity no rational man could deny.
We don’t even know what our country is doing, Narmonov thought to himself. For at least the past eight years all figures on economic performance had been false in one way or another, each compounding itself on the next until the economic forecasts generated by the GOSPLAN bureaucracy were as fictitious as the list of Stalin’s virtues. The ship he commanded was running deeper and deeper into an enveloping fog of lies told by functionaries whose careers would be destroyed by the truth. That was how he spoke of it at the weekly Politburo meetings. Forty years of rosy goals and predictions had merely plotted a course on a meaningless chart. Even the Politburo itself didn’t know the state of the Soviet Union—something the West hardly suspected.
The alternative? That was the rub, wasn’t it? In his darker moments, Narmonov wondered if he or anyone else could really change things. The goal of his entire political life had been to achieve the power that he now held, and only now did he fully understand how circumscribed that power was, All the way up the ladder of his career he’d noted things that had to change, never fully appreciating how difficult that would be. The power he wielded wasn’t the same as Stalin’s had been. His more immediate predecessors had seen to that. Now the Soviet Union wasn’t so much a ship to be guided, as a huge bureaucratic spring that absorbed and dissipated energy and vibrated only to its own inefficient frequency. Unless that changed . . . the West was racing into a new industrial age while the Soviet Union still could not feed itself, China was adopting the economic lessons of Japan, and in two generations might become the world’s third economy: a billion people with a strong, driving economy, right on our border, hungry for land, and with a racial hatred of all Russians that could make Hitler’s fascist legions seem like a flock of football hooligans. That was a strategic threat to his country that made the nuclear weapons of America and NATO shrivel to insignificance—and still the Party bureaucracy didn’t see that it had to change or risk being the agent of its own doom!