“You said in your note you could tell me what I want to know.”
“Yes.” The coffee arrived. He took a sip, and was silent for a moment. “You want to know if Taylor Winthrop and his family were murdered.”
Dana’s heart began to beat faster. “Were they?”
“Yes.” It came out in an eerie whisper.
Dana felt a sudden chill. “Do you know who killed them?”
“Yes.”
She took a deep breath. “Who?”
He raised a hand to stop her. “I will tell you, but first you must do something for me.”
Dana looked at him and said cautiously, “What?”
“Get me out of Russia. I am no longer safe here.”
“Why can’t you just go to the airport and fly away? I understand that foreign travel is no longer forbidden.”
“Dear Miss Evans, you are naive. Very naive. True, it is not like the old days of communism, but if I were to try what you suggest, they would kill me before I even got close to an airport. The walls still have ears and eyes. I am in great danger. I need your help.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in. Dana looked at him in dismay. “I can’t get you—I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“You must. You must find a way. My life is in danger.”
Dana was thoughtful for a moment. “I can talk to the American ambassador and—”
“No!” Sasha Shdanoff’s voice was sharp.
“But that’s the only way—”
“Your embassy has traitors’ ears. No one must know about this but you and whoever is going to help you. Your ambassador cannot help me.”
Dana felt suddenly depressed. There was no possible way she could sneak a top Russian commissar out of Russia. I couldn’t sneak a cat out of this country. And she had another thought. This whole thing was probably a ruse. Sasha Shdanoff had no information. He was using her as a means to get to America. This trip had been for nothing.
Dana said, “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Commissar Shdanoff.” She got to her feet, furious.
“Wait! You want proof? I will give you proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
It took him a long time to answer. When he spoke, he said slowly, “You are forcing me to do something I have no wish to do.” He rose. “You will come with me.”
Thirty minutes later, they were going up the private back entrance to Sasha Shdanoff’s offices at the Bureau for International Economic Development.
“I could be executed for what I am about to tell you,” Sasha Shdanoff said when they arrived. “But I have no choice.” He made a helpless gesture. “Because I will be killed if I stay here.”
Dana watched as Shdanoff walked over to a large safe built into the wall. He spun the combination, pulled open the safe, and took out a thick book. He carried it to his desk. On the front of the book it said in red lettering Klassifitsirovann’gy.
“This is highly classified information,” Commissar Shdanoff told Dana. He opened the book.
Dana looked closely as he slowly started to turn the pages. Each page contained color photographs of bombers, space launch vehicles, antiballistic missiles, air-to-surface missiles, automatic weapons, tanks, and submarines.
“This is Russia’s complete arsenal.” It looked enormous, deadly.
“At this moment, Russia has more than one thousand intercontinental ballistic missiles, more than two thousand atomic warheads, and seventy strategic bombers.” He pointed to various weapons as he turned the pages. “This is the Awl…Acrid…Aphid…Anab…Archer…Our nuclear arsenal rivals that of the United States.”
“It’s very, very impressive.”
“The Russian military has grave problems, Miss Evans. We are facing a crisis. There is no money to pay the soldiers, and the morale is very low. The present offers little hope, and the future looks worse, so the military is being forced to turn to the past.”
Dana said, “I—I’m afraid I don’t understand how this—”
“When Russia was truly a superpower, we built more weapons than even the United States. All those weapons are sitting here now. There are dozens of countries hungry for them. They are worth billions.”
Dana said patiently, “Commissar, I understand the problem, but—”