Vatutin blanched, and made a mistake: “Who told you?”
“My God, he briefed me last year on intermediate arms. I heard he was sick. You’re not joking, are you?”
“There is nothing the least bit amusing about this. I cannot say much, and it may not go beyond this table, but—yes, Filitov was working for . . . for someone outside our borders. He’s confessed, and the first phase of the interrogation is complete.”
“But he knows everything! The arms-negotiation team should know of this. It alters the whole basis for the talks,” Golovko said.
Vatutin hadn’t considered that, but it wasn’t his place to make policy decisions. He was, after all, nothing more than a policeman with a very special beat. Golovko might have been right in his assessment, but rules were rules.
“The information is being closely held for the moment, Sergey Nikolayevich. Remember that.”
“Compartmentalization of information can work both for and against us, Klementi,” Golovko warned, wondering if he should warn the negotiators.
“That’s true enough,” Vatutin agreed.
“When did you arrest your subject?” Golovko asked, and got his reply. The timing . . . He took a breath, and forgot about the negotiations. “The Chairman has met at least twice with a senior CIA officer—”
“Who, and when?”
“Sunday night and yesterday morning. His name is Ryan. He’s my counterpart on the American team, but he’s an intelligence type, not a field officer as I once was. What do you make of that?”
“You’re sure he’s not an operations man?”
“Positive. I can even tell you the room he works in. This is not a matter of uncertainty. He’s an analyst, a senior one, but only a desk man. Special assistant to their Deputy Director for Intelligence, before that he was part of a high-level liaison team in London. He’s never been in the field.”
Vatutin finished his tea and poured another cup. Next he buttered a piece of bread. He took his time thinking about this. There was ample opportunity to delay a response, but—
“All we have here is unusual activity. Perhaps the Chairman has something going that is so sensitive—”
“Yes—or perhaps that is how it’s supposed to appear,” Golovko observed.
“For a ‘One’ man, you seem to have our way of thinking, Sergey. Very well. What we would do ordinarily—not that a case like this is ordinary, but you know what I mean—is that we assemble information and take it to the Director of the Second Chief Directorate. The Chairman has bodyguards. They would be taken aside and questioned. But such a thing would have to be handled very, very carefully. My chief would have to go to—who?” Vatutin asked rhetorically. “A Politburo member, I suppose, or perhaps the Secretary of the Central Committee, but . . . the Filitov matter is being handled very quietly. I believe the Chairman may wish to use it as political leverage against both the Defense Minister and Vaneyev . . .”
“What?”
“Vaneyev’s daughter was acting as a spy for the West—well, a courier to be precise. We broke her, and—”
“Why has this not become public knowledge?”
“The woman is back at her job, by order of the Chairman,” Vatutin replied.
“Klementi, do you have any idea what the hell is going on here?”
“No, not now. I assumed that the Chairman was seeking to strengthen his political position, but the meetings with a CIA man . . . you’re sure of this?”
“I arranged the meetings myself,” Golovko repeated. “The first must have been agreed upon before the Americans arrived, and I merely handled the details. Ryan requested the second. He passed a note to me—about as well as a trainee-officer on his first job. They met at the Barricade Theater yesterday, as I told you. Klementi, something very strange is happening.”
“It would seem so. But we have nothing—”
“What do you mean—”
“Sergey, investigation is my job. We have nothing but disparate bits of information that might easily be explained. Nothing queers an investigation like moving too rapidly. Before we can act, we must assemble and analyze what we have. Then we can go to see my chief, and he can authorize further action, Do you think two colonels can act on this without clearing it with higher authority? You have to write up everything you know and bring it to me. How soon can you do that?”
“I have to be at the negotiating session in”—he checked his watch—”two hours. That will last until sixteen hours, followed by a reception. The Americans leave at twenty-two hours.”
“Can you skip the reception?”
“It will be awkward, but yes.”
“Be in my office at sixteen-thirty,” Vatutin said formally. Golovko, who was the senior officer by a year, smiled for the first time. “By your order, Comrade Colonel.”
“Marshal Yazov, what is the position of the Ministry?” Narmonov asked.
“No less than six hours,” the Defense Minister said. “In that time we should be able to conceal most of the highly sensitive items. As you know, we would prefer not to have our sites inspected at all, though examining American facilities does offer some intelligence advantages.”
The Foreign Minister nodded. “The Americans will ask for less, but I think we can settle on that number.”
“I disagree.” Heads of the Politburo members turned to Alexandrov’s chair. The ideologue’s florid complexion was displaying itself again. “It is bad enough to reduce our arsenals at all, but to have Americans examine the factories, to get all our secrets, this is madness.”
“Mikhail Petrovich, we have been through this,” General Secretary Narmonov said patiently. “Further discussion?” He looked around the table. Heads nodded. The General Secretary checked off the item on his note pad. He waved to the Foreign Minister.
“Six hours, nothing less.”
The Foreign Minister whispered instruction to an aide, who left the room at once to call the chief negotiator. Next he leaned forward. “That leaves only the question of which arms will be eliminated—the hardest question of all, of course. That will require another session—a long one.”
“We are scheduled to have our summit in three months . . .” Narmonov observed.
“Yes. It should be decided by then. Preliminary excursions into this question have not met any serious obstacles.”
“And the American defensive systems?” Alexandrov asked. “What of them?” Heads turned again, now to the KGB Chairman.
“Our efforts to penetrate the American Tea Clipper program continue. As you know, it corresponds very closely to our Project Bright Star, though it would seem that we are further along in the most important areas,” Gerasimov said, without looking up from his scratch pad.
“We cut our missile force in half while the Americans learn to shoot our missiles down,” Alexandrov groused.
“And they will cut their force in half while we work to the same end,” Narmonov went on. “Mikhail Petrovich, we’ve been working along these lines for over thirty years, and much harder than they have.”
“We are also further along in testing,” Yazov pointed out. “And—”
“They know of it,” Gerasimov said. He referred to the test the Americans had observed from the Cobra Belle aircraft, but Yazov didn’t know about that, and even the KGB hadn’t discovered how the test had been observed, merely that the Americans knew of it. “They have intelligence services too, remember.”
“But they haven’t said anything about it,” Narmonov observed.
“The Americans have occasionally been reticent to discuss such things. They complain about some technical aspects of our defense activity, but not all of them, for fear of compromising their intelligence-gathering methods,” Gerasimov explained casually. “Possibly they have conducted similar tests, though we have not learned of it. The Americans, too, are able to maintain secrecy when they wish.” Taussig had never gotten that information out either. Gerasimov leaned back to let others speak.
“In other words, both sides will continue as before,” Narmonov concluded.
“Unless we are able to win a concession,” the Foreign Minister said. “Which is unlikely to happen. Is there anyone at this table who thinks we should restrict our missile-defense programs?” There wasn’t. “Then why should we realistically expect the Americans to feel any differently?”
“But what if they get ahead of us!” Alexandrov demanded.
“An excellent point, Mikhail Petrovich,” Narmonov seized the opportunity. “Why do the Americans always seem to get ahead of us?” he asked the assembled chieftains of his country.
“They do so not because they are magicians, but because we allow them to—because we cannot make our economy perform as it should. That denies Marshal Yazov the tools our men in uniform need, denies our people the good things of life that they are coming to expect, and denies us the ability to face the West as equals.”
“Our weapons make us equals!” Alexandrov objected.
“But what advantage do they give us when the West has weapons, too? Is there anyone around this table who is content to be equal to the West? Our rockets do that for us,” Narmonov said, “but there is more to national greatness than the ability to kill. If we are to defeat the West, it cannot be with nuclear bombs—unless you want the Chinese to inherit our world.” Narmonov paused. “Comrades, if we are to prevail we have to get our economy moving!”