Prologue


THE CASTAWAY would have been dead before sundown but for the sharp eyes of an Italian
seaman called Mario. By the time he was spotted he had lapsed into unconsciousness, the exposed
parts of his near−naked body grilled to second−degree burns by the relentless sun, and those parts
submerged in seawater soft and white between the salt sores like the limbs of a rotting goose.
Mario Curcio was the cook−steward on theGaribaldi, an amiable old rust bucket out of Brindisi,
thumping her way eastward toward Cape Ince and on to Trabzon in the far eastern corner of the
north shore of Turkey. She was on her way to pick up a cargo of almonds from Anatolia.
Just why Mario decided that morning in the last ten days of April 1982 to empty his bucket of potato
peelings over the lee rail instead of through the garbage chute at the poop, he could never explain,
nor was he ever asked to. But perhaps to take a breath of fresh Black Sea air and break the monotony
of the steam heat in the cramped galley, he stepped out on deck, strolled to the starboard rail, and
hurled his garbage to an indifferent but patient sea. He turned away and started to lumber back to his
duties. After two steps he stopped, frowned, turned, and walked back to the rail, puzzled and
uncertain.
The ship was heading east−northeast to clear Cape Ince, so that as he shielded his eyes and gazed
abaft the beam, the noon sun was almost straight in his face. But he was sure he had seen something
out there on the blue−green rolling swell between the ship and the coast of Turkey, twenty miles to
the south. Unable to see it again, he trotted up theafterdeck, mounted the outside ladders to the wing
of the bridge, and peered again. Then he saw it, quite clearly, for half a second between the softly
moving hills of water. He turned to the open door behind him, leading into the wheelhouse, and
shoutedCapitano!
Captain Vittorio Ingrao took some persuading, for Mario was a simple lad, but he was enough of a
sailor to know that if a man might be out there on the water, he was duty−bound to turn his ship
around and have a closer look, and his radar had indeed revealed an echo. It took the captain half an
hour to bring theGaribaldi around and back to the spot Mario had pointed at, and then he, too, saw it.
The skiff was barely twelve feet long, and not very wide. A light craft, of the type that could have
been a ships jolly boat. Forward of midships there was a single thwart across the boat, with a hole
in it for the stepping of a mast. But either
there had never been a mast or it had been ill−secured and
had gone overboard. With theGaribaldi stopped and wallowing in the swell, Captain Ingrao leaned
on the bridgewing rail and watched Mario and the bosun, Paolo Longhi, set off in the motor lifeboat
to bring the skiff alongside. From his elevation he could look down into the skiff as it was towed
closer.
The man in it was lying on his back in several inches of seawater. He was gaunt and emaciated,
bearded and unconscious,
his head to one side, breathing in short gasps. He moaned a few times as
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PROLOGUEspanspan 9
he was lifted aboard and the sailors hands touched his flayed shoulders and chest.
There was one permanently spare cabin on theGaribaldi, kept free as a sort of sick bay, and the
castaway was taken to it. Mario, at his own request, was given time off to tend the man, whom he
soon came to regard as his personal property, as a boy will take special care of a puppy he has
personally rescued from death. Longhi, the bosun, gave the man a shot of morphine from the
first−aid chest to spare him the pain, and the pair of them set to work on the sunburn.
Being Calabrians they knew a bit about sunburn and prepared the best sunburn salve in the world.
Mario brought from his galley a fifty−fifty mixture of fresh lemon juice and wine vinegar in a basin,
a light cotton cloth torn from his pillowcase,
and a bowl of ice cubes. Soaking the cloth in the
mixture and wrapping it around a dozen ice cubes, he gently pressed the pad to the worst areas,
where the ultraviolet rays had bitten through almost to the bone. Plumes of steam rose from the
unconscious man as the freezing astringent drew the heat out of the scorched flesh. The man
shuddered.
Better a fever than death by burn shock. Mario told him in Italian. The man could not hear, and if
he had, he could not have understood.
Longhi joined his skipper on theafterdeck, where the skiff had been hauled.
Anything? he asked.
Captain Ingrao shook his head.
Nothing on the man, either. No watch, no name tag. A pair of cheap underpants with no label. And
his beard looks about ten days old.
Theres nothing here, either, said Ingrao. No mast, no sail, no oars. No food and no water
container. No name on the boat, even. But it could have peeled off.
A tourist from a beach resort, blown out to sea? asked Longhi.
Ingrao shrugged. Or a survivor from a small freighter, he said. Well be at Trabzonin two days.
The Turkish authorities
can solve that one when he wakes up and talks. Meanwhile,
lets get under
way. Oh, and we must cable our agent there and tell him whats happened. Well need an
ambulance on the quay when we dock.
Two days later the castaway, still barely conscious and unable
to speak, was tucked up between
white sheets in a sick ward in the small municipal hospital of Trabzon.
Mario the sailor had accompanied his castaway in the ambulance
from the quay to the hospital,
along with the ships agent and the ports medical officer, who had insisted on checking the
delirious man for communicable diseases. After waiting an hour by the bedside, he had bade his
unconscious friend farewell and returned to theGaribaldi to prepare the crews lunch. That had been
the previous day, and the old Italian tramp steamer had sailed during the evening.
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PROLOGUEspanspan 10
Now another man stood by the bedside, accompanied by a police officer and the white−coated
doctor. All three were Turkish, but the short, broad man in the civilian suit spoke passable English.
Hell pull through, said the doctor, but hes very sick for the moment. Heatstroke,
second−degree sunburn, exposure generally, and by the look of it, he hasnt eaten for days.
Generally weak.
What are these? asked the civilian, gesturing at the intravenous
tubes that entered both the mans
arms.
Saline drip and concentrated glucose drip for nourishment and to offset shock, said the doctor.
The sailors probably saved his life by taking the heat out of the burns, but weve bathed him
incalamine to help the healing process. Now its between him and Allah.
Umit Erdal, partner in the shipping and trading company of Erdal andSemait, was the Lloyds
subagent for the port of Trabzon, and theGaribaldis agent had thankfully passed the matter of the
castaway over to him. The sick mans eyelids fluttered in the nut−brown, bearded face. Erdal
cleared his throat, bent over the figure, and spoke in his best English.
What ... is ... you ... name? he asked slowly and clearly.
The man groaned and moved his head from side to side several times. The Lloyds man bent his
head closer to listen.Zradzhenyi, the sick man murmured,zradzhenyi.
Erdal straightened up. Hes not Turkish, he said with finality,
but he seems to be called
Zradzhenyi. Its probably a Ukrainian name.
Both his companions shrugged.
Ill inform Lloyds in London, said Erdal. Maybe theyll have news of a missing vessel
somewhere in the Black Sea.
The daily bible of the worlds merchant marine fraternity isLloyds List, which is published
Monday to Saturday and contains editorials, features, and news on one topic onlyshipping. Its
partner in harness,Lloyds Shipping Index, gives the movements of the worlds thirty thousand
active merchant vessels: name of ship, owner, flag of registry, year of construction,
tonnage, where
last reported coming from, and where bound.
Both organs are published out of a building complex at Sheepen Place, Colchester, in the English
county of Essex. It was to this building that Umit Erdal telexed the shipping movements into and out
of the port of Trabzon, and added a small extra for the attention of the Lloyds Shipping
Intelligence
Unit in the same building.
The SI unit checked their maritime casualty records to confirm that there were no recent reports of
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PROLOGUEspanspan 11
missing, sunk, or simply overdue vessels in the Black Sea, and passed the paragraph
over to the
editorial desk of theList. Here a subeditor gave it a mention as a news brief on the front page,
including the name the castaway had given as his own. It appeared the following morning.
Most of those who readLloyds List that day in late April flipped past the paragraph about the
unidentified man in Trabzon.
But the piece caught and held the sharp eyes and the attention
of a man in his early thirties who
worked as senior clerk and trusted employee in a firm of chartered shipbrokers situated
in a small
street called Crutched Friars in the center of the City of London, financial and commercial square
mile of the British capital. His colleagues in the firm knew him as Andrew Drake.
Having absorbed the content of the paragraph, Drake left his desk and went to the company
boardroom, where he consulted
a framed chart of the world that showed prevailing wind and
ocean−current circulation. The winds in the Black Sea during spring and summer are predominantly
from the north, and the currents screw counterclockwise around this small ocean from the southern
coast of the Ukraine in the far northwest of the sea, down past the coasts of Rumania and Bulgaria,
then swing eastward again into the shipping lanes between Istanbul and Cape Ince.
Drake did some calculations on a scratch pad. A small skiff, setting off from the marshes of the delta
of the Dniester River just south of Odessa could make four to five knots with a following wind and
favorable current, southward past Rumania and Bulgaria toward Turkey. But after three days it
would tend to be carried eastward, away from the Bosporus toward the eastern end of the Black Sea.
The Weather and Navigation section ofLloyds List confirmed
there had been bad weather nine
days earlier in that area. The sort, Drake mused, that could cause a skiff in the hands of an unskilled
seaman to capsize, lose its mast and all its contents, and leave its occupant, even if he could climb
backinto it again, at the mercy of the sun and the wind.
Two hours later Andrew Drake asked for a week of his owed holidays, and it was agreed that he
could take it, but only starting the following Monday, May 3.
He was mildly excited as he waited out the week and bought himself from a nearby agency a
round−trip ticket from London to Istanbul. He decided to buy the connecting ticket from Istanbul to
Trabzon with cash in Istanbul. He also checked to confirm that a British passport holder needs no
visa for Turkey, but after work he secured for himself the needed smallpox vaccination certificate at
the British Airways medical center at Victoria.
He was excited because he thought there just might be a chance that, after years of waiting, he had
found the man he was looking for. Unlike the three men by the castaways bedside two days earlier,
he knew what country the wordzradzhenyi came from. He also knew it was not the mans name. The
man in the bed had been muttering the wordbetrayed
in his native tongue, and that language was
Ukrainian. Which could mean that the man was a refugee Ukrainian partisan.
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PROLOGUEspanspan 12
Andrew Drake, despite his Anglicized name, was also a Ukrainian, and a fanatic.
Drakes first call after arriving in Trabzon was at the office of Umit Erdal, whose name he had
obtained from a friend at Lloyds on the grounds that he was taking a holiday on the Turkish coast
and, speaking not a word of Turkish, might need some assistance. Erdal, seeing the letter of
introduction that Drake was able to produce, was happily unquestioning as to why his visitor should
want to see the castaway in the local hospital. He wrote a personal letter of introduction to the
hospital administrator, and, shortly after lunch, Drake was shown into the small, one−bed ward
where the man lay.
The local Lloyds agent had already told him that the man, while conscious again, spent much of the
time sleeping, and during his periods of wakefulness had so far said absolutely nothing. When Drake
entered the room, the invalid was lying on his back, eyes closed. Drake drew upa chair and sat by the
bedside. For a time he stared at the mans haggard face. After several minutes the mans eyelids
flickered, half−opened, and closed again. Whether he had seen the visitor staring at him intently,
Drake did not know. But he knew the man was on the fringe of wakefulness. Slowly he leaned
forward and said clearly in the sick mans ear:
Shchene vmerlaUkraina.
The words mean, literally, The Ukraine is not dead, but in a looser translation would mean The
Ukraine lives on. They are the first words of the Ukrainian national anthem, banned by the Russian
masters, and would be instantly recognizable
to a nationally conscious Ukrainian.
The sick mans eyes flicked open, and he regarded Drake intently. After several seconds he asked in
Ukrainian, Who are you?
A Ukrainian, like yourself, said Drake.
The other mans eyes clouded with suspicion.
Quisling, he said.
Drake shook his head. No, he said calmly. I am British by nationality, born and bred there, son
of a Ukrainian father
and an English mother. But in my heart Im as Ukrainian as you are.
The man in the bed stared stubbornly at the ceiling.
I could show you my passport, issued in London, but that would prove nothing. A Chekisti could
produce one if he wanted to try to trick you. Drake had used the slang term for a Soviet secret
policeman and KGB member.
But you are not in the Ukraine anymore and there are no Chekisti here, Drake went on. You
were not washed up on the shores of the Crimea, nor of south Russia or Georgia. You did not land in
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PROLOGUEspanspan 13
Rumania or Bulgaria, either. You were picked up by an Italian ship and landed here at Trabzon. You
are in Turkey. You are in the West. You made it.
The mans eyes were on his face now, alert, lucid, wanting to believe.
Can you move? asked Drake.
I dont know, said the man.
Drake nodded across the small room to the window, beyond
which the sounds of traffic could be
heard.
The KGB can dress up hospital staff to look like Turks, he said, but they cannot change a whole
city for one man whom they could torture for a confession if they wanted. Can you make the
window?
Helped by Drake, the castaway hobbled painfully to the window and looked out at the street scene.
The cars are Austins and Morrises, imported from England,
 said Drake.Peugeots from France
and Volkswagens from West Germany. The words on the billboards are in Turkish. That
advertisement over there is for Coca−Cola.
The man put the back of one hand against his mouth and chewed at the knuckles. He blinked rapidly
several times.
I made it, he said.
Yes, said Drake, by a miracle you made it.
My name, said the castaway when he was back in bed, is Miroslav Kaminsky. I come from
Ternopol. I was the leader of a group of seven Ukrainian partisans.
Over the next hour the story came out. Kaminsky and six others like him, all from the Ternopol area,
once a hotbed of Ukrainian nationalism, and a region where some of the embers
still glowed, had
decided to strike back against the program of ruthlessrussification of their land that had intensified in
the sixties and become a final solution in the seventies and early eighties for the whole area of
Ukrainian art, poetry,
literature, language, and national consciousness. In six months of operations
they had ambushed and killed two low−level Party secretariesRussians imposed by Moscow on
Ternopoland a plainclothes KGB agent. Then had come the betrayal.
Whoever had talked, he, too, had died in the hail of fire as the green insignia of the KGB special
troops had closed in on the country cottage where the group was meeting to plan its next operation.
Only Kaminsky had escaped, running like an animal through the undergrowth, hiding by day in
barns and woodland, moving by night, heading southeast toward the coast with a vague idea of
jumping a Western ship.
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PROLOGUEspanspan 14
It had been impossible to get near the docks of Odessa. Living off potatoes and swedes from the
fields, he had sought refuge in the swampy country of the Dniester estuary southwest
of Odessa,
toward the Rumanian border. Finally, coming
by night on a small fishing hamlet on a creek, he had
stolen a skiff with a stepped mast and a small sail. He had never been in a sailing boat before and
knew nothing of the sea. Trying to manage the sail and the rudder, just holding on and praying, he
had let the skiff run before the wind, southward
by the stars and the sun.
By pure luck he had avoided the patrol boats that cruise the offshore waters of the Soviet Union, and
the fishing fleets. The tiny sliver of wood that contained him had slipped past the coastal radar
sweeps until he was out of range. Then he was lost, somewhere between Rumania and the Crimea,
heading
south, but far from the nearest shipping lanesif he did but know where they were, anyway.
The storm caught him unawares. Not knowing how to shorten sail in time, he had capsized, spending
the night using his last reserves of strength clinging to the upturned hull. By morning he had righted
the skiff and crawled inside. His clothes, which he had taken off to let the night wind cool his skin,
were gone. So also were his few raw potatoes, the open lemonade bottle of fresh water, the sail, and
the rudder. The pain came shortly after sunrise as the heat of the day increased. Oblivion came on the
third day after the storm. When he regained consciousness
he was in a bed, taking the pain of the
burns in silence, listening to the voices he thought were Bulgarian. For six days he had kept his eyes
closed and his mouth shut.
Andrew Drake heard him out with a song in his heart. He had found the man he had waited years for.
Ill go and see the Swiss consul in Istanbul and try to obtain
temporary travel documents for you
from the Red Cross, he said when Kaminsky showed signs of tiring. If I do, I can probably get
you to England, at least on a temporary
visa. Then we can try for asylum. Ill return in a few days.
By the door, he paused.
You cant go back, you know, he told Kaminsky. But with your help, I can. Its what I want
Its what Ive always wanted.
Andrew Drake took longer than he had thought in Istanbul, and it was not until May 16 that he was
able to fly back to Trabzon with travel papers for Kaminsky. He had extended his leave after a long
telephone call to London and a row with the broking firms junior partner, but it was worth it. For
through Kaminsky he was certain he could fulfill the single burning ambition of his life.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (and the Tsarist Empire before it), despite its monolithic
appearance from outside, has two Achilles heels. One is the problem of feeding its 250 million
people. The other is euphemistically called the nationalities question. In the fifteen constituent
republics
ruled from Moscow, capital of the USSR and of the Russian
Soviet Federated Socialist
Republic (RSFSR), are several score identifiable non−Russian peoples, the most numerous
and
perhaps the most nationally conscious of whom are the Ukrainians. By 1982 the population of the
RSFSR numbered only 120 million out of the 250. Second in economic importance and population,
with 70 million inhabitants,
was the Ukrainian SSR, which was one reason why under
tsars and
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PROLOGUEspanspan 15
Politburo the Ukraine had always been singled out for special attention and particularly
ruthlessrussification. The second reason lay in its history.
The Ukraine is divided by the Dnieper River into two parts. West (right−bank) Ukraine stretches
from Kiev westward
to the Polish border. East (left−bank) Ukraine is more russified, having dwelt
under the tsars for centuries; during those centuries West Ukraine formed a part, successively, of
Poland, Austria, and the Austro−Hungarian Empire. Its spiritual
and cultural orientation was and
remains more Western than the rest of the region, except possibly for the three Baltic
States of
Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Ukrainians read and write with Roman letters, not Cyrillic script;
they are overwhelmingly Uniate Catholics, not Russian Orthodox Christians. Their language, poetry,
literature, arts, and traditions
predate the rise of theRus conquerors who swept down from the north.
In 1918, with the breakup of Austria−Hungary, West Ukrainians tried desperately for a separate
republic out of the empires ruins; unlike the Czechs, Slovaks, and Magyars, they failed and were
annexed in 1919 by Poland as the province of EastGalicia. When Hitler swept into western Poland in
1939, Stalin came in from the east with the Red Army and tookGalicia. In 1941, the Germans took it.
What followed was a violent and vicious confusion of hopes, fears, and loyalties.
Some hoped for
concessions from Moscow if they fought the Germans. Others mistakenly thought a free Ukraine
would come through the defeat of Moscow by Berlin,
and joined the Ukrainian Division, which
fought in German
uniform against the red Army. Others, like Kaminskys father, took to the
Carpathian Mountains as guerrillas and fought first one invader, then the next, then the first again.
They all lost. Stalin won, and pushed his empire westward to the Bug River, the new border for
Poland. West Ukraine came under the new tsars, the Politburo, but the old dreams lived on. Apart
from one glimmer in the last days of Khrushchev, the program to crush them once and for all had
steadily intensified.
StepanDrach, a student from Rovno, joined up with the Ukrainian Division. He was one of the lucky
ones; he survived
the war and was captured by the British in Austria in 1945. Sent to work as a farm
laborer in Norfolk, he would certainly have been returned to the USSR for execution by the NKVD
in 1946 as the British Foreign Office and American
State Department quietly conspired to return the
two million
victims of Yalta to the mercies of Stalin. But he was lucky again. Behind a Norfolk
haystack he tumbled a Land Army girl, and she became pregnant. Marriage was the answer,
and six
months later, on compassionate grounds, he was excused repatriation and allowed to stay in England.
Freed from farm labor, he used the knowledge he had gained as a radio operator to set up a small
repair shop in Bradford, a center for Britains thirty thousand Ukrainians. The first baby died in
infancy; a second son, christened Andriy, was born in 1950.
Andriy learned Ukrainian at his fathers knee, and that was not all. He learned, too, of his fathers
land, of the great, sweeping vistas of the Carpathians and Ruthenia. He imbibed his fathers loathing
of Russians. But the father died in an automobile
crash when the boy was twelve; his mother, tired
of her husbands endless evenings with fellow exiles around the sitting−room fire, talking of the
past in a language she could never understand, Anglicized both their names to Drake, and Andriys
given name to Andrew. It was as Andrew Drake that the boy went to grammar school and the
university; as Andrew Drake that he received his first passport.
The rebirth came in his late teens at the university. There were other Ukrainians there, and he
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PROLOGUEspanspan 16
became fluent again in his fathers language. These were the late sixties, and the brief renaissance of
Ukrainian literature and poetry back in the Ukraine had come and gone, its leading lights mostly by
then doing slave labor in the camps of Gulag. So he absorbed these events with hindsight and
knowledge of what had befallen
the writers. He read everything he could get his hands on as the
first years of the seventh decade dawned: the classics ofTaras Shevchenko and those who wrote in
the brief flowering
under Lenin, suppressed and liquidated under Stalin. But most of all he readthe
works of those called the Sixtiers because they flourished for a brief few years until Brezhnev
struck yet again to stamp out the national pride they called for. He read and grieved for Osdachy,
Chornovil, and Dzyuba; and when he read the poems and secret diary of Pavel Symonenko, the
young firebrand dead of cancer at twenty−eight, the cult figure of the Ukrainian students inside the
USSR, his heart broke for a land he had never even seen.
With his love for this land of his dead father came a matching loathing of those he saw as its
persecutors. Avidly he devoured the underground pamphlets that came out, smuggled from the
resistance movement inside; he read theUkrainian Herald, with its accounts of what befell the
hundreds of unknowns, the miserable, forgotten ones who did not receive the publicity accorded to
the great Moscow trials of Daniel, Sinyavsky, Orlov, Shcharansky. With each detail, his hatred grew
until for Andrew Drake, once Andriy Drach, the personification of all evil in the world was called
simply the KGB.
He had enough sense of reality to eschew the crude, raw nationalism of the older exiles, and their
divisions between West and East Ukrainians. He rejected, too, their implanted anti−Semitism,
preferring to accept the works of Gluzman, both a Zionist and a Ukrainian nationalist, as the words
of a fellow Ukrainian. He analyzed the exile community in Britain and Europe and perceived there
were four levels: the language
nationalists, for whom simply speaking and writing in the tongue of
their fathers was enough; the debating nationalists,
who would talk forever and a day but do
nothing; the slogan daubers, who irritated their adoptive countrymen but left the Soviet Behemoth
untouched; and the activists, who demonstrated before visiting Moscow dignitaries, were carefully
photographed and filed by the Special Branch, and achieved a passing publicity.
Drake rejected them all. He remained quiet, well−behaved, and aloof. He came south to London and
took a clerking job. There are many in such work who have one secret passion, unknown to all their
colleagues, that absorbs all their savings, their spare time, and their annual holidays. Drake was such
a man. He quietly put together a small group of men who felt just as he did; traced them, met them,
befriended them, swore a common oath with them, and bade them be patient For Andriy Drach had a
secret dream, and, asT. E. Lawrence said, he was dangerous because he dreamed with his eyes
open. His dream was that one day he would strike one single gigantic blow against the men of
Moscow that would shake them as they had never been shaken before. He would penetrate the walls
of their power and hurt them right inside the fortress.
His dream was alive and one step nearer fulfillment for the finding of Kaminsky, and he was a
determined and excited man as his plane slipped once more out of a warm blue sky toward Trabzon.
Miroslav Kaminsky looked across at Drake with indecision on his face.
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PROLOGUEspanspan 17
I dont know, Andriy, he said. I just dont know. Despite everything you have done, I just
dont know if I can trust you that much. Im sorry, its the way Ive had to live all my life.
Miroslav, you could know me for the next twenty years and not know more about me than you do
already. Everything
Ive told you about me is the truth. If you cannot go back, then let me go in
your place. But I must have contacts there. If you know of anybody, anybody at all ...
Kaminsky finally agreed.
There are two men, he said at last. They were not blown when my group was destroyed, and no
one knew of them. I had met them only a few months earlier.
But they are Ukrainians, and partisans? asked Drake eagerly.
Yes, they are Ukrainians. But that is not their primary motivation. Their people, too, have suffered.
Their fathers, like mine, have been for ten years in the labor camps, but for a different reason. They
are Jews.
But do they hate Moscow? asked Drake. Do they, too, want to strike against the Kremlin?
Yes, they hate Moscow, replied Kaminsky. As much as you or I. Their inspiration seems to be a
thing called the Jewish Defense League. They heard about it on the radio. It seems their philosophy,
like ours, is to begin to strike back, not to take any more persecution lying down.
Then let me make contact with them, urged Drake.
The following morning, Drake flew back to London with the names and addresses in Lvov of the
two young Jewish partisans. Within two weeks he had subscribed to a package tour run by Intourist
for early July, visiting Kiev, Ternopol, and Lvov. He also quit his job and withdrew his life savings
in cash.
Unnoticed by anyone, Andrew Drake, born Andriy Drach, was going to his private waragainst the
Kremlin.

Chapter One


A GENTLY WARMING SUN shone down on Washington that middle of May, bringing the first
shirt sleeves to the streets and the first rich red roses to the garden outside the French windows of the
Oval Office in the White House. But though the windows were open and the fresh smells of grass
and flowers wafted into the private sanctum of the most powerful
official in the world, the attention
of the four men present was focused upon other plants in a far and foreign country.
President William Matthews sat where American presidents have always sathis back to the south
wall of the room, facing
northward across a wide antique desk toward the classical marble fireplace
that dominates the north wall. His chair, unlike
that of most of his predecessors, who had favored
personalized,
made−to−measure seating, was a factory−made, high−backed swivel chair of the kind
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 18
any senior corporate executive
might have. For Bill Matthews, as he insisted his publicity posters
call him, had always through his successive and successful election campaigns stressed his ordinary,
down−home personal tastes in clothing, food, and creature comforts. The chair, therefore, which
could be seen by the scores of delegates he liked to welcome personally into the Oval Office, was not
luxurious. The fine antique desk, he was at pains to point out, he had inherited, and it had become
part of the precious tradition of the White House. That went down well.
But there Bill Matthews drew the line. When he was in conclave with his senior advisers, the Bill
that his humblest constituent could call him to his face became the formal Mr. President. He also
dropped the nice−guy tone of voice and the rumpled bird−doggrin that had originally gulled the
voters
intoputting the boy−next−door into the White House. He was not the boy−next−door, and his
advisers knew it; he was the man at the top.
Seated in upright armchairs across the desk from the President were the three men who had asked to
see him alone that morning. Closest to him in personal terms was his Assistant
for National Security
Affairs. Variously referred to in the environs of the West Wing and the Executive Office Building as
the Doctor or that damned Polack, the sharp−facedStanislaw Poklewski was sometimes
disliked but never underestimated.
They made a strange pair, to be so close: the blond whiteAnglo−Saxon Protestant from the Midwest,
and the dark, taciturn,
devout Roman Catholic who had come over from Krakow
as a small boy.
But what Bill Matthews lacked in understanding of the tortuous psychologies of Europeans in
general and Slavs in particular could be made up by the Jesuit−educated calculating machine who
always had his ear. There were two other reasons why Poklewski appealed to him: he was
ferociously loyal, and he had no political ambitions
outside the shadow of Bill Matthews. But there
was one reservation: Matthews always had to balance the Doctors suspicious dislike of the men of
Moscow with the more urbane
assessments of his Boston−born Secretary of State.
The Secretary was not present that morning at the meeting asked for personally by Poklewski. The
other two men on the chairs in front of the desk were Robert Benson, Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, and Carl Taylor.
It has frequently been written that Americas National Security
Agency is the body responsible for
all electronic espionage.
It is a popular idea but not true. The NSA is responsible for that portion of
electronic surveillance and espionage
conducted outside the United States on her behalf that has to
do with listening: wiretapping, radio monitoring, and, above all, the plucking out of the ether of
literally billions
of words a day in hundreds of dialects and languages for recording, decoding,
translating, and analyzing. But not spy satellites. Thevisual surveillance of the globe by cameras
mounted in airplanes and, more important, in space satellites has always been the preserve of the
National Reconnaissance Office, a joint U.S. Air Force−CIA operation. Carl Taylor was its Director,
and he was a two−star general in Air Force Intelligence.
The President shuffled together the pile of high−definition photographs on his desk and handed them
back to Taylor, who rose to accept them and placed them back in his briefcase.
All right, gentlemen, Matthews said slowly, so you have shown me that the wheat crop in a
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 19
small portion of the Soviet
Union, maybe even only in the few acres shown in these pictures, is
coming up defective. What does it prove?
Poklewski glanced across at Taylor and nodded. Taylor cleared his throat.
Mr. President, Ive taken the liberty of setting up a screening of what is coming in right now from
one of our Condor satellites. Would you care to see it?
Matthews nodded and watched Taylor cross to the bank of television sets placed in the curving west
wall below the bookcases, which had been specially remodeled to accept the console of TV sets.
When non−security−cleared deputations were in the room, the new row of TV screens was covered
by sliding teak doors. Taylor turned on the extreme left−hand set and returned to the Presidents
desk. He detached one of the six telephones from its cradle, dialed a number, and said simply,
Screen it.
President Matthews knew about the Condor satellites. Flying
higher than anything before, using
cameras of a sophistication
that could show a close−up of a human fingernail from two hundred
miles up, through fog, rain, hail, snow, cloud, and night, the Condors were the latest and the best.
Back in the seventies, photographic surveillance, though good, had been slow, mainly because each
cartridge of exposed
film had to be ejected from the satellite at specific positions,
free−fall to earth
in protective coverings, be retrieved with the aid of bleepers and tracing devices, be air−freighted to
the NROs central laboratories, be developed and screened. Only when the satellite was within that
arc of flight which permitted a direct line between it and the United States or one of the
American−controlled tracking stations could simultaneous
TV transmissions take place. But when
the satellite passed close over the Soviet Union, the curve of the earths surface baffled direct
reception, so the watchers had to wait until it came around again.
Then, in the summer of 1978, the scientists cracked the problem with the Parabola Game. Their
computers devised a cats cradle of infinite complexity for the flight tracks of half a dozen space
cameras around the globes surface, to this end: whichever spy−in−the−sky the White House wanted
to tap into could be ordered by signal to begin transmitting what it was seeing, and throw the images
in a low−parabola arc to another satellite that was not out of vision. The second bird would throw the
image on again, to a third satellite, and so on, like basketball players tossing the ball from fingertip to
fingertip while they run. When the needed images were caught by a satellite over the United States,
they could be beamed back down to NRO headquarters, and from there be patched through to the
Oval Office.
The satellites were traveling at over forty thousand miles per hour; the globe was spinning with the
hours, tilting with the seasons. The number of computations and permutations was astronomical, but
the computers solved them. By 1980, at the touch of a button, the President had twenty−four−hour
access by simultaneous transmission to every square inch of the worlds surface. Sometimes it
bothered him. It never bothered
Poklewski; he had been brought up on the idea of the exposition of
all private thoughts and actions in the confessional.
The Condors were like confessionals, with
himself as the priest he had once nearly become.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 20
As the screen flickered into life, General Taylor spread a map of the Soviet Union on the Presidents
desk and pointed with a forefinger.
What you are seeing, Mr. President, is coming to you from Condor Five, tracking here,
northeastward, between Saratov and Perm, across the black−earth country.
Matthews raised his gaze to the screen. Great tracts of land were unrolling slowly down the screen
from top to bottom, a swath about twenty miles broad. The land looked bare, as in autumn after the
harvest. Taylor muttered a few instructions into the telephone. Seconds later, the view concentrated,
closing
to a band barely five miles wide. A small group of peasant shackswooden−plankisbas, no
doubtlost in the infinity of the steppe, drifted past on the left of the screen. The line of a road
entered the picture, stayed center for a few uncertain moments, then drifted offscreen. Taylor
muttered
again; the picture closed to a track a hundred yards wide. Definition was better. A man
leading a horse across the vast expanse of steppe came and went.
Slow it down, instructed Taylor into the telephone. The ground beneath the cameras passed less
quickly. High in space, the Condor satellite was still on track at the same height and speed; inside the
NROs laboratories the images were being narrowed and slowed. The picture came closer, slower.
Against the bole of a lone tree, a Russian peasant slowly unbuttoned his fly. President Matthews was
not a scientist and never ceased to be amazed at the possibilities of advanced technology. He was, he
reminded himself, sitting in a warm office on a late spring morning in Washington, watching a man
urinate somewhere in the shadow of the Ural mountain range. The peasant passed slowly out of
vision toward the bottom of the screen. The image coming up was of a wheat field, many hundreds
of acres abroad.
And freeze, instructed Taylorinto the telephone. The picture slowly stopped moving and held.
Close up, said Taylor.
The picture came closer and closer until the entire yard−square screen was filled with twenty
separate stalks of young wheat. Each looked frail, listless, bedraggled. Matthews had seen them like
this in the dust bowls of the Midwest he had known in his boyhood, fifty years before.
Stan, said the President.
Poklewski, who had asked for the meeting and the screening,
chose his words carefully.
Mr. President, the Soviet Union has a total grain target this year or two hundred forty million
metric tons. Now, this breaks down into goal targets of one hundred twenty million tons of wheat,
sixty million of barley, fourteen million of oats, fourteen million of corn, twelve million of rye, and
the remaining twenty million of a mixture of rice, millet, buckwheat,
and leguminous grams. The
giants of the crop are wheat and barley.
He rose and came around the desk to where the map of the Soviet Union was still spread. Taylor
flicked off the television
and resumed his seat.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 21
About forty percent of the annual Soviet grain crop, or approximately one hundred million tons,
comes from here, in the Ukraine and the Kuban area of the southern RSFSR, Poklewski continued,
indicating the areas on the map. And it is all winter wheat. That is, its planted in September and
October. It has reached the stage of young shoots by November,
when the first snows come. The
snows cover the shoots and protect them from the bitter frosts of December and January.

Poklewski turned and paced away from the desk to the curved ceiling−to−floor windows behind the
presidential chair. He had this habit of pacing when he talked.
The Pennsylvania Avenue observer cannot actually see the Oval Office, tucked away at the back of
the tiny West Whig building, but because the tops of these south−facing tall windows
to the office
can just be observed from the Washington Monument, a thousand yards away, they have long been
fitted with six−inch−thick, green−tinted bulletproof glass just in case a sniper near the monument
might care to try a long shot. As Poklewski reached the windows, the aquamarine−tinted light
coming through them cast a deeper pallor across his already pale face.
He turned and walked back, just as Matthews was preparing
to swing his chair around to keep him
in vision.
Last December, the whole of the Ukraine and the Kuban Steppe were subjected to a freak thaw
during the early days of the month. Theyve had them before, but never as warm. A great wave of
warm southern air swept in off the Black Sea and the Bosporus and rolled northeastward over the
Ukraine and the Kuban region. It lasted a week and melted the first coverings of snow, about six
inches deep, to water. The young wheat and barley stems were exposed. Ten days later, as if to
compensate, the same freak weather patterns hammered the whole area with frosts going fifteen,
even twenty degrees, below zero.
Which did the wheat no good at all, suggested the President.
Mr. President, interjected Robert Benson of the CIA, our best agricultural experts have
estimated the Soviets will be lucky if they salvage fifty percent of that Ukrainian and Kuban crop.
The damage was massive and irreparable.
So that is what you have been showing me? asked Matthews.
No, sir, said Poklewski. That is the point of this meeting.
The other sixty percent of the Soviet
crop, nigh on one hundred forty million tons, comes from the great tracts of the Virgin Lands in
Kazakhstan, first put under the plow by Khrushchev in the middle fifties, and the black−earth
country, butting up against the Urals. A small portion comes from across the mountains in Siberia.
That is what we have been showing you.
What is happening there? asked Matthews.
Something odd, sir. Something strange is happening to the Soviet grain crop. All this remaining
sixty percent is spring wheat, put down as seed in March and April after the thaw. It should be
coming up sweet and green by now. Its coming up stunted, sparse, sporadic, as if it had been hit by
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 22
some kind of blight.
Weather again? asked Matthews.
No. They had a damp winter and spring over this area, but nothing serious. Now that the sun has
come out, the weather is perfectwarm and dry.
How widespread is this ... blight?
Benson came in again. We dont know, Mr. President. We have maybe fifty samples of film of this
particular problem. We tend to focus on military concentrations, of coursetroop movements, new
rocket bases, arms factories. But what we have indicates it must be pretty widespread.
So what are you after?
What wed like, resumed Poklewski, is your go−ahead to spend a lot more time on this
problem, find out just how big it is for the Soviets. It will mean trying to send in delegations,
businessmen. Diverting a lot of space surveillance from non−priority tasks. We believe it is in
Americas vital interest to find out just exactly what it is that Moscow is going to have to handle
here.
Matthews considered and glanced at his watch. He had a troop of ecologists due to greet him and
present him with yet another plaque in ten minutes. Then there was the Attorney General before
lunch about the new labor legislation. He rose.
Very well, gentlemen, you have it. By my authority. This is one I think we need to know. But I
want an answer within thirty days.
General Carl Taylor sat in the seventh−floor office of Robert Benson, the Director of Central
Intelligence, or DCI, ten days later and gazed down at his own report, clipped to a large sheaf of
photo stills, that lay on the low coffee table in front of him.
Its a funny one, Bob. I cant figure it out, he said.
Benson turned away from the great, sweeping picture windows
that form one entire wall of the
DCIs office at Langley, Virginia, and face out north by northwest across vistas of trees toward the
invisible Potomac River. Like his predecessors,
he loved that view, particularly in late spring and
early summer, when the woodlands are a wash of tender green. He took his seat on the low settee
across the coffee table from Taylor.
Neither can my grain experts, Carl. And I dont want to go to the Department of Agriculture.
Whatever is going on over there in Russia, publicity is the last thing we need, and if I bring in
outsiders, itll be in the papers within a week. So what have you got?
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 23
Well, the photos show the blight, or whatever it is, is not pandemic, said Taylor. Its not even
regional. Thats the twister. If the cause were climatic, thered be weather phenomena
to explain it.
There arent any. If it were a straight disease of the crop, it would be at least regional. If it were
parasite−caused, the same would apply. But its haphazard. There are stands of strong, healthy,
growing wheat right alongside the affected acreage. The Condor reconnaissance shows no logical
pattern at all. How about you?
Benson nodded in agreement.
Its illogical, all right. Ive put a couple of assets in on the ground, but they havent reported back
yet. The Soviet press has said nothing. My own agronomy boys have been over your photos
backwards and forwards. All they can come up with is some blight of the seed or in the earth. But
they cant figure the haphazard nature of it all, either. It fits no known pattern. But the important
thing is I have to produce some kind of estimate for the President for the total probable Soviet
grain
harvest next September and October. And I have to produce it soon.
Theres no way I can photograph every damn stand of wheat and barley in the Soviet Union, even
with Condor, said Taylor. It would take months. Can you give me that?
Not a chance, said Benson. I need information about the troop movements along the China
border, the buildup opposite
Turkey and Iran. I need a constant watch on the Red Army
deployments in East Germany and the locations of the new SS−twenties behind the Urals.
Then I can only come up with a percentage figure based on what we have photographed to date,
and extrapolate for a Soviet−wide figure, said Taylor.
Its got to be accurate, said Benson. I dont want a repeat
of 1977.
Taylor winced at the memory, even though he had not been Director of the NRO in that year. In
1977 the American
intelligence machine had been fooled by a gigantic Soviet confidence trick.
Throughout the summer, all the experts of the CIA and the Department of Agriculture had been
telling the President the Soviet grain crop would reach around 215 million metric tons. Agriculture
delegates visiting Russia had been shown fields of fine, healthy wheat; in fact, these had been the
exceptions.Photoreconnaissance analysis had been faulty. In the autumn the then Soviet President,
Leonid Brezhnev, had calmly announced the Soviet crop would be only 194 million tons.
As a result, the price of the U.S. wheat surplus over domestic
requirements had shot up, in the
certainty the Russians
would after all haveto buy close on 20 million tons. Too late. Through the
summer, acting through French−based front companies, Moscow had already bought up futures for
enough wheat to cover the deficitand at the old, low price. They had even chartered dry−cargo
shipping space through front men, then redirected the ships, which were en route to Western Europe,
into Soviet ports. The affair was known in Langley as the Sting.
Carl Taylor rose. Okay, Bob, Ill go on taking happy snapshots.
Carl. The DCIs voice stopped him in the doorway. Nice pictures are not enough. By July first I
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 24
want the Condors
back on military deployment. Give me the best grain−figure
estimates you have
by the end of the month. Err, if you must, on the side of caution. And if theresanything your boys
spot that could explain the phenomenon, go back and reshoot it. Somehow we have to find out what
the hell is happening
to the Soviet wheat.
President Matthewss Condor satellites could see most things in the Soviet Union, but they could
not observe Harold Lessing, one of the three first secretaries in the Commercial Section of the British
Embassy in Moscow at his desk the following
morning. It was probably just as well, for he would
have been the first to agree he was not an edifying sight. He was pale as a sheet and feeling
extremely sick.
The main embassy building of the British mission in the Soviet capital is a fine old pre−Revolution
mansion facing north on Maurice Thorez Embankment, staring straight across the Moscow River at
the south facade of the Kremlin wall. It once belonged to a millionaire sugar merchant in tsarist days,
and was snapped up by the British soon after the Revolution. The Soviet government has been trying
to get the British out of there ever since. Stalin hated the place; every morning as he rose he had to
see, across the river from his private apartments, the Union Jack fluttering in the morning breeze, and
it angered him greatly.
But the Commercial Section does not have the fortune to dwell in this elegant cream−and−gold
mansion. It functions in a drab complex of postwar jerry−built office blocks two miles away on
KutuzovskyProspekt, almost opposite the wedding−cake−style Ukraina Hotel. The same compound,
guarded at its single gate by several watchful militiamen, contains several drab apartment buildings
set aside for the flats of diplomatic personnel from a score or more of foreign embassies, and is
called collectively theKorpus Diplomatik, or Diplomats Compound.
Harold Lessings office was on the top floor of the commercial
office block. When he finally
fainted at ten−thirty that bright May morning, it was the sound of the telephone he brought crashing
to the carpet with him that alerted his secretary
in the neighboring office. Quietly and efficiently,
she summoned the commercial counselor, who had two youngattachés
assist Lessing, by this time
groggily conscious again, out of the building, across the parking lot, and up to his own sixth−floor
apartment inKorpus 6, a hundred yards away.
Simultaneously, the commercial counselor telephoned the main embassy on Maurice Thorez
Embankment, informed the head of Chancery, and asked for the embassy doctor to be sent over. By
noon, having examined Lessing in his own bed in his own flat, the doctor was conferring with the
commercial
counselor. To his surprise, the senior man cut him short and suggested they drive over
to the main embassy to consult jointly with the head of Chancery. Only later did the doctor, an
ordinary British general practitioner doing a three−year stint on attachment to the embassy with the
rank of First Secretary, realize why the move was necessary. The head of Chancery took them all to
a special room in the embassy
building that was secure from wiretappingsomething the
Commercial Section was definitely not.
Its a bleeding ulcer, the medico told the two diplomats. He seemingly has been suffering from
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 25
what he thought was an excess of acid indigestion for some weeks, even months. Put it down to
strain of work and bunged down loads of antacid
tablets. Foolish, really; he should have come to
me.
Will it require hospitalization? asked the head of Chancery, gazing at the ceiling.
Oh yes, indeed. said the doctor. I think I can get him admitted here within a few hours. The local
Soviet medical men are quite up to that sort of treatment.
There was a brief silence as the two diplomats exchanged glances. The commercial counselor shook
his head. Both men had the same thought; because of their need−to−know, both of them were aware
of Lessings real function in the embassy. The doctor was not. The counselor deferred to Chancery.
That will not be possible, said Chancery smoothly. Not in Lessings case. Hell have to be
flown to Helsinki on the afternoon shuttle. Will you ensure that he can make it?
But surely ... began the doctor. Then he stopped. He realized why they had had to drive two miles
to have this conversation. Lessing must be the head of the Secret Intelligence
Service operation in
Moscow. Ah, yes. Well, now. Hes shocked and has lost probably a pint of blood. Ive given him
a hundred milligrams of pethidine as a tranquilizer. I could give him another shot at three this
afternoon. If hes chauffeur−driven to the airport and escorted all the way, yes, he can make
Helsinki. But hell need immediate entry into hospital when he gets there. Id prefer to go with him
myself, just to be sure. I could be back tomorrow.
The head of Chancery rose. Splendid, he pronounced. Give yourself two days. And my wife has
a list of little items shes run short of, if youd be so kind. Yes? Thank you so much. Ill make all
the arrangements from here.
For years it has been customary in newspapers, magazines, and books to refer to the headquarters of
Britains Secret Intelligence
Service, or SIS, or MI6, as being at a certain office block in the
borough of Lambeth in London. It is a custom that causes quiet amusement to the staff members of
the Firm, as it is more colloquially known in the community of such organizations, for the
Lambeth address is a sedulously maintained front.
In much the same way, a front is maintained at Leconfield House on Curzon Street, still supposed to
be the home of the counterintelligence arm, MI5, to decoy the unneeded inquirer.
In reality, those
indefatigable spy−catchers have not dwelt near the Playboy Club for years.
The real home of the worlds most secret Secret Intelligence
Service is a modern−design
steel−and−concrete block, allocated
by the Department of the Environment, a stones throw from
one of the capitals principal Southern Regional railway stations, and it was taken over in the early
seventies.
It was in his top−floor suite with its tinted windows looking out toward the spire of Big Ben and the
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 26
Houses of Parliament
across the river that, just after lunch, the Director Generalof the SIS received
the news of Lessings illness. The call came on one of the internal lines from the head of Personnel,
who had received the message from the basement cipher room. He listened carefully.
How long will he be off? he asked at length.
Several months, at least, said Personnel. Therell be a couple of weeks in hospital in Helsinki,
then home for a bit more. Probably several more weeks convalescence.
Pity, mused the Director General. We shall have to replace
him rather fast. His capacious
memory recalled to him that Lessing had been running two Russian agents, low−level staffers in the
Red Army and the Soviet Foreign Ministry, respectively
not world−beating, but useful. Finally he
said, Let me know when Lessing is safely tucked up in Helsinki. And get me a short list of
possibles for his replacement. By close of play tonight, please.
Sir Nigel Irvine was the third successive professional intelligence
man to rise to the post of Director
General of the SIS. The vastly bigger American CIA, which had been brought to the peak of its
powers by its first Director, Allen Dulles, had, as a result of abusing its strength with go−it−alone
antics, in the early seventies finally been brought under the control of an outsider. Admiral Stansfield
Turner. It was ironic that at exactly the same period a British government had finally done the
opposite, breaking the tradition of putting
the Firm under a senior diplomat from the Foreign Office
and letting a professional take over.
The risk had worked well. The Firm had paid a long penance for the Burgess, MacLean, and Philby
affairs, and Sir Nigel Irvine was determined that the tradition of a professional
at the head of the
Firm would continue after him. That was why he intended to be as strict as any of his immediate
predecessors in preventing the emergence of any Lone Rangers.
This is a service, not a trapeze act, he used to tell the novices
at Beaconsfield. Were not here
for the applause.
It was already dark by the time the three files arrived on Sir Nigel Irvines desk, but he wanted to
get the selection finished and was prepared to stay on. He spent an hour poring over the files, but the
selection seemed fairly obvious. Finally he used the telephone to ask the head of Personnel, who was
still in the building, to step by. His secretary showed the staffer in, two minutes later.
Sir Nigel hospitably poured the man a whiskey and soda to match his own. He saw no reason not to
permit himself a few of the gracious things of life, and he had arranged a well−appointed
office,
perhaps to compensate for the stink of combat in 1944 and 1945, and the dingy hotels of Vienna in
the late forties when he was a junior agent in the Firm, suborning Soviet
personnel in the
Russian−occupied areas of Austria. Two of his recruits of that period, sleepers for years, were still
being run, he was able to congratulate himself.
Although the building housing the SIS was of modern steel, concrete, and chrome, the top−floor
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 27
office of its Director General
was decorated with an older and more elegant motif. The wallpaper
was a restfulcafé au lait; the wall−to−wall carpet, burnt orange. The desk, the highchair behind it, the
two uprights
in front of it, and the button−back leather Chesterfield were all genuine antiques.
From the Department of the Environment store of pictures,
to which the mandarins of Britains
Civil Service have access for the decoration of their office walls, Sir Nigel had collared a Dufy, a
Vlaminck, and a slightly suspect Breughel. He had had his eye on a small but exquisite Fragonard,
but a shifty grandee in Treasury had got there first.
Unlike the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, whose walls were hung with oils of past foreign
ministers like Canning and Grey, the Firm had always eschewed ancestral portraits. In any case,
whoever heard of such self−effacing men as Britain
s successive spymasters enjoying having their
likeness put on record in the first place? Nor were portraits of the Queen in full regalia much in
favor, though the White House and Langley were plastered with signed photos of the latest President.
Ones commitment to service of Queen and country in this building needs no further
advertisement, a dumbfounded
visitor from the CIA at Langley had once been told. If it did, one
wouldnt be working here, anyway.
Sir Nigel turned from the window and his study of the lights of the West End across the water.
It looks like Munro, wouldnt you say? he asked.
I would have thought so, answered Personnel.
Whats he like? Ive read the file; I know him slightly. Give me the personal touch.
Secretive.
Good.
A bit of a loner.
Blast.
Its a question of his Russian, said Personnel. The other two have good, working Russian.
Munro can pass for one. He doesnt normally. Speaks to them in strongly accented, moderate
Russian. When he drops that, he can blend right in. Its just that, well, to run Mallard and Merganser
at such short notice, brilliant Russian would be an asset.
Mallard and Merganser were the code names for the two low−level agents recruited and run by
Lessing. Russians being run inside the Soviet Union by the Firm tended to have bird names, in
alphabetical order according to the date of recruitment.
The twoM s were recent acquisitions. Sir
Nigel grunted.
Very well. Munro it is. Where is he now?
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 28
On training. At Beaconsfield. Tradecraft.
Have him here tomorrow afternoon. Since hes not married,
he can probably leave quite quickly.
No need to hang about. Ill have the Foreign Office agree to the appointment in the morning as
Lessings replacement in the Commercial Section.
Beaconsfield, being in the Home County of Buckinghamshire
which is to say, within easy reach of
central London
was years ago a favored area for the elegant country homes of those who enjoyed
high and wealthy status in the capital. By the early seventies, most of the buildings played host to
seminars, retreats, executive courses in management and marketing, or even religious observation.
One of them housed the Joint Services School of Russian and was quite open about it; another,
smaller house, contained the training school of the SIS and was not open about it at all.
Adam Munros course in tradecraft was popular, not the least because it broke the wearisome
routine of enciphering and deciphering. He had his classs attention, and he knew it.
Right, said Munro that morning in the last week of the month. Now for some snags and how to
get out of them.
The class was still with expectancy. Routine procedures were one thing; a sniff of some real
Opposition was more interesting.
You have to pick up a package from a contact, said Munro. But you are being tailed by the local
fuzz. You have diplomatic cover in case of arrest, but your contact does not. Hes right out in the
cold, a local man. Hes coming to a meet, and you cant stop him. He knows that if he hangs about
too long, he could attract attention, so hell wait ten minutes. What do you do?
Shake the tail, suggested someone.
Munro shook his head.
For one thing, youre supposed to be an innocent diplomat,
not a Houdini. Lose the tail and you
give yourself away as a trained agent. Secondly, you might not succeed. If its the KGB and theyre
using the first team, you wont do it, short of dodging back into the embassy. Try again.
Abort, said another trainee. Dont show. The safety of the unprotected contributor is
paramount.
Right, said Munro. But that leaves your man with a package he cant hold onto forever, and no
procedure for an alternative meet. He paused for several seconds. Or does he ...?
Theres a second procedure established in the event of an abort, suggested a third student.
Good, said Munro. When you had him alone in the good old days before the routine surveillance
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 29
was switched to yourself, you briefed him on a whole range of alternative meets in the event of an
abort. So he waits ten minutes; you dont show up; he goes off nice and innocently to the second
meeting point. What is this procedure called?
Fallback, ventured the bright spark who wanted to shake off the tail.
First fallback, corrected Munro. Well be doing all this on the streets of London in a couple of
months, so get it right. They scribbled hard. Okay. You have a second location
in the city, but
youre still tailed. You havent got anywhere.
What happens at the first−fallback location?
There was a general silence. Munro gave them thirty seconds.
You dont meet at this location, he instructed. Under the procedures you have taught your
contact, the second location
is always a place where he can observe you but you can stay well away
from him. When you know he is watching you, from a terrace perhaps, froma café, but always well
away from you, you give him a signal. Can be anything: scratch an ear, blow your nose, drop a
newspaper and pick it up again. What does that mean to the contact?
That youre setting up the third meet, according to your prearranged procedures, said Bright
Spark.
Precisely. But yourestill being tailed. Where does the third meet happen? What kind of place?
This time there were no takers.
Its a buildinga bar, club, restaurant, or what you likethat has a closed front, so that once the
door is closed, no one can see through any plate−glass windows from the street into the ground floor.
Now, why is that the place for the exchange?
There was a brief knock, and the head of Student Program poked his face through the doorway. He
beckoned to Munro, who left his desk and went across to the door. His superior officer drew him
outside into the corridor.
Youve been summoned, he said quietly. The Master wants to see you. In his office at three.
Leave here at the lunch break. Bailey will take over afternoon classes.
Munro returned to his desk, somewhat puzzled. The Master
 was the half−affectionate and
half−respectful nickname for any holder of the post of Director General of the Firm.
One of the class had a suggestion to make. So that you can walk to the contacts table and pick up
the package unobserved.
Munro shook his head. Not quite. When you leave the place, the tailing Opposition might leave one
man behind to question the waiters. If you approached your man directly, the face of a contact could
be observed and the contributor identified, even by description. Anyone else?
TheDevil'sAlternative
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Use a drop inside the restaurant, proposed Bright Spark. Another shake from Munro.
You wont have time, he advised. The tails will be tumbling
into the place a few seconds after
you. Maybe the contact,
who by arrangement was there before you, will not have found the right
toilet cubicle free. Or the right table unoccupied.
Its too hit−or−miss. No, this time well use the
brush−pass. Note it; it goes like this.
When your contact received your signal at the first−fallback location that you were under
surveillance, he moved into the agreed procedure. He synchronized his watch to the nearest second
with a reliable public clock or, preferably, with the telephone time service. In another place, you did
exactly
the same.
At an agreed hour, he is already sitting in the agreed bar, or whatever. Outside the door, you are
approaching at exactly the same time, to the nearest second. If youre ahead of time, delay a bit by
adjusting your shoelace, pausing at a shopwindow. Do not consult your watch in an obvious
manner.
To the second, you enter the bar and the door closes behind
you. At the same second, the contact is
on his feet, bill paid, moving toward the door. At a minimum, five seconds will elapse before the
door opens again and the fuzz come in. You brush past your contact a couple of feet inside the door,
making sure it is closed to block off vision. As you brush past, you pass the package or collect it.
Part company and proceed to a vacant table or barstool. The Opposition will come in seconds later.
As they move past him, the contact steps out and vanishes. Later the bar staff will confirm you spoke
to nobody, contacted nobody. You paused at nobodys table, nor anyone at yours. You have the
package in an inside
pocket, and you finish your drink and go back to the embassy.
The Opposition
will, hopefully, report that you contacted nobody throughout the entire stroll.
That is the brush−pass ... andthat is the lunch bell. All right, well scrub it for now.
By midafternoon, Adam Munro was closeted in the secure library beneath the Firms headquarters,
beginning to bore through a pile of buff folders. He had just five days to master and commit to
memory enough background material to enable
him to take over from Harold Lessing at the Firms
legal
resident in Moscow.
On May 31 he flew from London to Moscow to take up his new appointment.
Munro spent the first week settling in. To all the embassy staff but an informed few he was just a
professional diplomat and the hurried replacement for Harold Lessing. The Ambassador,
head of
Chancery, chief cipher clerk, and commercial counselor knew what his real job was. The fact of his
relatively
advanced age at forty−six years to be only a First Secretary in the Commercial Section
was explained by his late entrance into the diplomatic corps.
The commercial counselor ensured that the commercial files placed before him were as
unburdensome as possible. He had a brief and formal reception by the Ambassador in the latters
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 31
private office, and a more informal drink with the head of Chancery. He met most of the staff and
was taken to a round of diplomatic parties to meet many of the other diplomats
from Western
embassies. He also had a face−to−face and more businesslike conference with his opposite number
at the American Embassy. Business, as the CIA man confirmed
to him, was quiet.
Though it would have made any staffer at the British Embassy
in Moscow stand out like a sore
thumb to speak no Russian, Munro kept his use of the language to a formal and accented version
both in front of his colleagues and when talking to official Russians during the introduction process.
At one party, two Soviet Foreign Ministry personnel had had a brief exchange in rapid, colloquial
Russian a few feet away. He had understood it completely, and as it was mildly interesting,
he had
filed it to London.
On his tenth day, he sat alone on a park bench in the sprawling Soviet Exhibition of Economic
Achievements, in the extreme northern outskirts of the Russian capital. He was waiting to make first
contact with the agent from the Red Army whom he had taken over from Lessing.
Munro had been born in 1936, the son of an Edinburgh doctor, and his boyhood through the war
years had been conventional,
middle−class, untroubled, and happy. He had attended
a local school
up to the age of thirteen years and then spent five atFettes College, one of Scotlands best schools. It
was during his period here that his senior languages master had detected in the lad an unusually acute
ear for foreign languages.
In 1954, with National Service then obligatory, he had gone into the Army and after basic training
secured a posting to his fathers old regiment, the First Gordon Highlanders. Transferred to Cyprus,
he had been on operations against EOKA partisans in the Troodos Mountains that late summer.
Sitting in a park in Moscow, he could see the farmhouse still, in his minds eye. They had spent half
the night crawling through the heather to surround the place, following a tip−off from an informant.
When dawn came, Munro was posted alone at the bottom of a steep escarpment behind the hilltop
house. The main body of his platoon stormed the front of the farm just as dawn broke, coming up the
shallower slope with the sun behind them.
From above him, on the other side of the hill, he could hear the chattering of the Stens in the quiet
dawn. By the first rays of the sun he could see the two figures that came tumbling out of the rear
windows, in shadow until their headlong flight down the escarpment took them clear of the lee of the
house. They came straight at him, as he crouched behind a fallen olive tree in the shadow of the
grove, their legs flying as they sought to keep their balance on the shale. They came nearer, and one
of them had what looked like a short black stick in his right hand. Even if he had shouted, he told
himself
later, they could not have stopped their momentum. But he did not say that to himself at the
time. Training took over; he just stood up as they reached a point fifty feet from him, and loosed off
two short, lethal bursts.
The force of the bullets lifted them both, one after the other, stopped their momentum, and slammed
them onto the shale at the foot of the slope. As a blue plume of cordite smoke drifted away from the
muzzle of his Sten, he moved forward to look down at them. He thought he might feel sick or faint.
There was nothing; just a dead curiosity. He looked at the faces. They were boys, younger than
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 32
himself, and he was eighteen.
His sergeant came crashing through the olive grove.
Well done, laddie! he shouted. You got em.
Munro looked down at the bodies of the boys who would never marry or have children, never dance
to a bouzouki or feel the warmth of sun and wine again. One of them was still clutching the black
stick; it was a sausage. A piece of it hung out of the bodys mouth. He had been having breakfast
Munro turned on the sergeant.
You dont own me! he shouted. You dont bloody own me! Nobody owns me but me!
The sergeant put the outburst down to first−kill nerves and failed to report it. Perhaps that was a
mistake. For authority failed to notice that Adam Munro was not completely, not one hundred
percent, obedient. Not ever again.
Six months later he was urged to consider himself as potential
officer material and extend his time
in the Army to three years so as to qualify for a short−service commission. Tired of Cyprus, he did
so and was posted back to England, to the Officer Cadet Training Unit at Eaton Hall. Three months
later he got his pip as a second lieutenant.
While form−filling at Eaton Hall, he had mentioned that he was fluent in French and German. One
day he was casually tested in both languages, and his claim proved to be correct. Just after his
commissioning, it was suggested he might like to apply for the Joint Services Russian language
course, which in those days was situated at a camp called Little Russia at Bodmin in Cornwall. The
alternative was regimental duties at the barracks in Scotland, so he agreed. Within six months he
emerged not merely fluent in Russian but virtually able to pass for a Russian.
In 1957, despite considerable pressure from the regiment to stay on, he left the Army, for he had
decided he wanted to be a foreign correspondent. He had seen a few of them in Cyprus and thought
he would prefer the job to office work. At the age of twenty−one he joinedThe Scotsman in his
native
Edinburgh as a cub reporter, and two years later moved to London, where he was taken on by
Reuters, the international
news agency with its headquarters at 85 Fleet Street.
In the summer of 1960 his languages again came to his rescue; he was twenty−four, and he was
posted to the Reuters office in West Berlin as second man to the then bureau chief, Alfred Kluehs.
That was the summer before the Wall went up, and within three months he had metValentina, the
woman he now realized to have been the only one he had ever really loved in his life. ...
A man sat down beside him and coughed. Munro jerked himself out of his reverie. Teaching
tradecraft to sprogs one week, he told himself, and forgetting the basic rules a fortnight
later. Never
slacken attention before a meet.
The Russian looked at him uncomprehendingly, but Munro wore the necessary polka−dot tie. Slowly
the Russian put a cigarette in his mouth, eyes on Munro. Corny, but it still worked. Munro took out
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER ONE 33
his lighter and held the flame to the cigarette tip.
Ronald collapsed at his desk two weeks ago, he said softly and calmly. Ulcers, Im afraid. I am
Michael. Ive been asked to take over from him. Oh, and perhaps you can help me. Is it true that the
Ostankino TV tower is the highest structure in Moscow?
The Russian officer in plainclothes exhaled smoke and relaxed. The words were exactly the ones
established by Lessing, whom he had known only as Ronald.
Yes, he replied. It is five hundred forty meters high.
He had a folded newspaper in his hand, which he laid on the seat between them. Munros folded
raincoat slipped off his knees to the ground. He retrieved it, refolded it, and placed it on top of the
newspaper. The two men ignored each other for ten minutes, while the Russian smoked. Finally he
rose and stubbed the butt into the ground, bending as he did so.
A fortnights time, muttered Munro. The mens toilet underG Block at the New State Circus.
During the clown Popovs act. The show starts at seven−thirty.
The Russian moved away and continued strolling. Munro surveyed the scene calmly for ten minutes.
No one showed interest. He scooped up the mackintosh, newspaper, and buff envelope inside it and
returned by Metro to KutuzovskyProspekt.
The envelope contained an up−to−date list of Red Army
officer postings.

Chapter Two


WHILE ADAM MUNRO was changing trains at Revolution Square shortly before elevenA.M. that
morning of June 10, a convoy of a dozen sleek black Zil limousines was sweeping through the
Borovitsky Gate in the Kremlin wall a hundred feet above his head and thirteen hundred feet
southwest of him. The Soviet Politburo was about to begin a meeting that would change history.
The Kremlin is a triangular compound, with its apex, dominated
by the Sobakin Tower, pointing
due north. On all sides it is protected by a fifty−foot wall studded by eighteen towers and penetrated
by four gates.
The southern two thirds of this triangle is the tourist area, where docile parties troop along to admire
the cathedrals, halls, and palaces of the long−dead tsars. At the midsection is a cleared swath of
tarmacadam, patrolled by guards, an invisible
dividing line across which tourists may not step. But
the cavalcade of custom−built limousines that morning purred across this open space toward the
three buildings in the northern part of the Kremlin.
The smallest of these is the Kremlin Theater to the east. Half exposed and half hidden behind the
theater stands the building of the Council of Ministers, seemingly the home of the government,
inasmuch as the ministers meet here. But the real government of the USSR lies not in the Council of
Ministers
but in the Politburo, the tiny, exclusive group who constitute the pinnacle of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or CPSU.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 34
The third building is the biggest. It lies up along the western facade, just behind the walls
crenelations, overlooking
the Alexandrovsky Gardens down below. In shape it is a long, slim
rectangle running north. The southern end is the old Arsenal, a museum for antique weaponry. But
just behind the Arsenal the interior walls are blocked off. To reach the upper section, one must arrive
from outside and penetrate a high, wrought−iron barrier that spans the gap between the Ministers
Building and the Arsenal. The limousines that morning swept through the wrought−iron gates and
came to rest beside the upper entrance to the secret building.
In shape, the upper Arsenal is a hollow rectangle; inside is a narrow courtyard running north and
south, and dividing the complex into two even narrower blocks of apartments and offices.
There are
four stories, including the attics. Halfway up the inner, eastern office block, on the third floor,
overlooking the courtyard only and screened from prying eyes, is the room where the Politburo
meets every Thursday morning to hold sway over 250 million Soviet citizens and scores of millions
more who like to think they dwell outside the boundaries
of the Russian empire.
For an empire it is. Although in theory the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic is one of
fifteen republics that make up the Soviet Union, in effect the Russia of the tsars, ancient or modern,
rules the other fourteen non−Russian republics
with a rod of iron. The three arms Russia uses and
needs to implement this rule are the Red Army, including as it always does the Navy and Air Force;
the Committee of State Security, or KGB, with its 100,000 staffers, 300,000 armed troops, and
600,000 informers; and the Party Organizations
Section of the General Secretariat of the Central
Committee, controlling the Party cadres in every place of work, thought, abode, study, and leisure
from the Arctic to the hills of Persia, from the fringes of Brunswick to the shores of the Sea of Japan.
And that is just inside the empire.
The room in which the Politburo meets in the Arsenal Building of the Kremlin is about fifty feet long
and twenty−five wide, not enormous for the power enclosed in it. It is decorated in the heavy,
marbled decor favored by the Party bosses, but dominated by a long table topped with green baize.
The table is T−shaped.
That morning, June 10, 1982, was unusual, for they had received no agenda, just a summons. And
the men who grouped at the table to take their places sensed, with the perceptive
collective nose for
danger that had brought them all to this pinnacle, that something of importance was afoot.
Seated at the center point of the head of theT in his usual chair was the chief of them all, Maxim
Rudin. Ostensibly his superiority lay in his title of President of the USSR. But nothing except the
weather is ever quite what it appears in Russia. His real power came to him through his title of
General
Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR. As such, he was also Chairman of the
Central Committee, and Chairman
of the Politburo.
At the age of seventy−one he was craggy, brooding, and immensely cunning; had he not been the
latter, he would never have occupied the chair that had once supported Stalin (who rarely ever called
Politburo meetings), Malenkov, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. To his left and right he was flanked by
four secretaries from his own personal secretariat, men loyal to him personally above all else. Behind
him, at each corner of the north wall of the chamber, was a small table. At one sat two stenographers,
a man and a woman, taking down every word in shorthand. At the other, as a countercheck, two men
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 35
hunched over the slowly turning spools of a tape recorder. There was a spare recorder to take over
during spool changes.
The Politburo had thirteen members, and the other twelve ranged themselves, six a side, down the
stem of the T−shaped table, facing jotting pads, carafes of water, ashtrays. At the far end of this arm
of the table was one single chair. The Politburo
men checked numbers to make sure no one was
missing.
For the empty seat was the Penal Chair, sat in only by a man on his last appearance in that
room, a man forced to listen
to his own denunciation by his former colleagues, a man facing
disgrace, ruin, and once, not long ago, death at the Black Wall of the Lubyanka. The custom has
always been to delay the condemned man until, on entering, he finds all seats taken and only the
Penal Chair free. Then he knows. But this morning it was empty. And all were present.
Rudin leaned back and surveyed the twelve through half−closed eyes, the smoke from his inevitable
cigarette drifting past his face. He still favored the old−style Russianpapyrossy, half tobacco and half
thin cardboard tube, the tube nipped twice between finger and thumb to filter the smoke. His aides
had been taught to pass them to him one after the other, and his doctors to shut up.
To his left on the stem of the table was Vassili Petrov, age forty−nine, his ownprotégé and young for
the job he held, head of the Party Organizations Section of the General Secretariat
of the Central
Committee. Rudin could count on him in the trouble that lay ahead. Beside Petrov was the veteran
Foreign Minister, Dmitri Rykov, who would side with Rudin because he had nowhere else to go.
Beyond him was Yuri Ivanenko, slim and ruthless at fifty−three, standing out like a sore thumb in
his elegant London−tailored suit, as if flaunting his sophistication to a group of men who hated all
forms of Westernness. Picked personally by Rudin to be chairman of the KGB, Ivanenko would side
with him simply because the opposition would come from quarters who hated Ivanenko and wanted
him destroyed.
On the other side of the table sat Yefrem Vishnayev, also young for the job, like half the
post−Brezhnev Politburo. At fifty−five he was the Party theoretician, spare, ascetic, disapproving,
the scourge of dissidents and deviationists, guardian of Marxist purity, and consumed by a
pathological loathing of the capitalist West. The opposition would come here, Rudin
knew. By his
side was Marshal Nikolai Kerensky, age sixty−three, Defense Minister and chief of the Red Army.
He would go where the interests of the Red Army led him.
That left seven, including Vladimir Komarov, responsible for Agriculture and sitting white−faced
because he, like Rudin and Ivanenko alone, knew roughly what was to come. The KGB chief
betrayed no emotion; the rest did not know.
It came when Rudin gestured to one of the Kremlin praetorian guards at the door at the far end of
the room to admit the person waiting in fear and trembling outside.
Let me present Professor Ivan Ivanovich Yakovlev, Comrades,
 Rudin growled as the man
advanced timorously to the end of the table and stood waiting, his sweat−damp report in his hands.
The professor is our senior agronomist and grain specialist from the Ministry of Agriculture, and a
member of the Academy of Sciences. He has a report for our attention. Proceed, Professor.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 36
Rudin, who had read the report several days earlier in the privacy of his study, leaned back and
gazed above the mans head at the far ceiling. Ivanenko carefully lit a Western king−size filtered
cigarette. Komarov wiped his brow and studied his hands. The professor cleared his throat.
Comrades, he began hesitantly. No one disagreed that they were comrades. With a deep breath the
scientist stared down at his papers and plunged straight into his report.
Last December and January our long−range weather forecast
satellites predicted an unusually
damp winter and early spring. As a result and in accordance with habitual scientific practice, it was
decided at the Ministry of Agriculture that our seed grain for the spring planting should be treated
with a prophylactic dressing to inhibit fungoid infections that would probably be prevalent as a result
of the dampness. This has been done many times before.
The treatment selected was a dual−purpose seed dressing: an organomercurial compound to inhibit
fungoid attack on the germinating grain, and a pesticide and bird repellant called lindane. It was
agreed in scientific committee that because
the USSR, following the unfortunate damage through
frost to the winter wheat crop, would need at least one hundred forty million tons of crop from the
spring wheat plantings, it would be necessary to sow six and a quarter million
tons of seed grain.
All eyes were on him now, the fidgeting stilled. The Politburo
members could smell danger a mile
off. Only Komarov, the one responsible for Agriculture, stared at the table in misery. Several eyes
swiveled to him, sensing blood. The professor
swallowed hard and went on.
At the rate of two ounces of organomercurial seed dressing per ton of grain, the requirement was
for three hundred fifty tons of dressing. There were only seventy tons in stock. An immediate order
was sent to the manufacturing plant for this dressing at Kuibyshev to go into immediate production
to make up the required two hundred eighty tons.
Is there only one such factory? asked Petrov.
Yes, Comrade. The tonnages required do not justify more factories. The Kuibyshev factory is a
major chemical plant, making many insecticides, weed killers, fertilizers, and so forth. The
production of the two hundred eighty tons of this chemical would take less than forty hours.
Continue, ordered Rudin.
Due to a confusion in communication, the factory was undergoing annual maintenance, and time
was running short if the dressing was to be distributed to the one hundred twenty−seven dressing
stations for seed grain scattered across the Soviet Union, the grain treated, and then taken back to the
thousands of state and collective farms in time for planting. So an energetic young official and Party
cadre was sent from Moscow to hurry things along. It appears he ordered the workmen to terminate
what they were doing, restore the plant to operating order, and start it functioning again.
He failed to do it in time? rasped Marshal Kerensky.
No, Comrade Marshal, the factory started work again, although
the maintenance engineers had not
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 37
quite finished. But something malfunctioned. A hopper valve. Lindane is a very powerful chemical,
and the dosage of the lindane to the remainder
of the organomercurial compound has tobe strictly
regulated.
The valve on the lindane hopper, although registering one−third open on the control panel, was in
fact stuck at full open. The whole two hundred eighty tons of dressing were affected.

What about quality control? asked one of the members, who had been born on a farm. The
professor swallowed again and wished he could quietly go into exile in Siberia without any more of
this torture.
There was a conjunction of coincidence and error, he confessed. The chief analytical and
quality−control chemist was away on holiday at Sochi during the plant closedown. He was
summoned back by cable. But because of fog in the Kuibyshev area, his plane was diverted and he
had to continue
his journey by train. When he arrived, production was complete.
The dressing was not tested? asked Petrov incredulously. The professor looked more sick than
ever.
The chemist insisted on making quality−control tests. The young functionary from Moscow wanted
the entire production
shipped at once. An argument ensued. In the event, a compromise was
reached. The chemist wanted to test every tenth bag of dressing, twenty−eight in all. The functionary
insisted
he could have only one. That was when the third error occurred.
The new bags had been stacked along with the reserve of seventy tons left over from last year. In
the warehouse, one of the loaders, receiving a report to send one single bag to the laboratory for
testing, selected one of the old bags. Tests proved it was perfectly in order, and the entire
consignment was shipped.
He ended his report. There was nothing more to say. He could have tried to explain that a
conjunction of three mistakes
a mechanical malfunction, an error of judgment by two men under
pressure, and a piece of carelessness by a warehousemanhad combined to produce the catastrophe.
But that was not his job, and he did not intend to make lame excuses for other men. The silence in
the room was murderous.
Vishnayev came in with icy clarity.
What exactly is the effect of an excessive component of lindane in this organomercurial
compound? he asked.
Comrade, it causes a toxic effect on the germinating seed in the ground, rather than a protective
effect. The seedlings come upif at allstunted, sparse, and mottled brown. There is virtually no
grain yield from such affected stems.
And how much of the spring planting has been affected? asked Vishnayev coldly.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 38
Just about four fifths, Comrade. The seventy tons of reserve compound was perfectly all right. The
two hundred eighty tons of new compound were all affected by the jamming
hopper valve.
And the toxic dressing was all mixed in with seed grain and planted?
Yes, Comrade.
Two minutes later the professor was dismissed, to his privacy
and his oblivion.
Vishnayev turned to Komarov.
Forgive my ignorance, Comrade, but it would appear you had some foreknowledge of this affair.
What has happened to the functionary who produced this ... cockup? (He used a crude Russian
expression that refers to a pile of dog mess on the pavement.)
Ivanenko cut in.
He is in our hands, he said, along with the analytical chemist who deserted his function, the
warehouseman, who is simply of exceptionally low intelligence, and the maintenance team of
engineers, who claim they demanded and received written instructions to wind up their work before
they had finished.
This functionary, has he talked? asked Vishnayev.
Ivanenko considered a mental image of the broken man in the cellars beneath the Lubyanka.
Extensively, he said.
Is he a saboteur, a fascist agent?
No, said Ivanenko with a sigh. Just an idiot; an ambitious
apparatchik trying to overfulfill his
orders. You can believemeon that one. We do know by now the inside of that mans skull.
Then one last question, just so that we can all be sure of the dimensions of this affair. Vishnayev
swung back to the unhappy Komarov. We already know we will save only fifty million tons of the
expected hundred million from the winter wheat. How much will we now get from the spring wheat
this coming October?
Komarov glanced at Rudin, who nodded imperceptibly.
Out of the hundred−forty−million−ton target for the spring−sown wheat and other grains, we
cannot reasonably expect more than fifty million tons, he said quietly.
The meeting sat in stunned horror.
That means a total yield over both crops of one hundred million tons, breathed Petrov. A
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 39
national shortfall of one hundred forty million tons. We could have taken a shortfall of fifty, even
seventy million tons. Weve done it before, endured
the shortages, and bought what we could from
elsewhere.
But this ...
Rudin closed the meeting.
We have as big a problem here as we have ever confronted,
Chinese and American imperialism
included. I propose we adjourn and separately seek some suggestions. It goes without saying that this
news does not pass outside those present in this room. Our next meeting will be a week from today.
As the thirteen men and the four aides at the top table came to their feet, Petrov turned to the
impassive Ivanenko.
This doesnt mean shortages, he muttered, this means famine.
The Soviet Politburo descended to their chauffeur−driven Zil limousines, still absorbing the
knowledge that a weedy professor of agronomy had just placed a time bomb under one of the
worlds two superpowers.
Adam Munros thoughts a week later as he sat in the circle at the Bolshoi Theater onKarl Marx
Prospekt were not on war but on loveand not for the excited embassy secretary beside him who had
prevailed on him to take her to the ballet.
He was not a great fan of ballet, though he conceded he liked some of the music. But the grace of the
entrechats andfouettés or as he called it, the jumping aboutleft him cold. By the second act
ofGiselle, the evenings offering, his thoughts were straying back again to Berlin.
It had been a beautiful affair, a once−in−a−lifetime love. He was twenty−four, turning twenty−five,
and she nineteen, dark and lovely. Because of her job they had had to conduct their affair in secret,
furtively meeting in darkened streets so that he could pick her up in his car and take her back to his
small flat at the western end ofCharlottenburg without anyones seeing. They had loved and talked,
she had made him suppers,
and they had loved again.
At first, the clandestine nature of their affair, like married people slipping away from the world and
each others partners,
had added spice, piquancy to the loving. But by the summer of 1961, when
the forests of Berlin were ablaze with leaves and flowers, when there was boating on the lakes and
swimming from the shores, it had become cramped, frustrating.
That was when he had asked her to
marry him, and she had almost agreed. She might still have agreed, but then came the Wall. It was
completed on August 13, 1961, but it was obvious for a week that it was going up.
That was when she made her decision, and they loved for the last time. She could not, she told him,
abandon her parents to what would happen to them: to the disgrace, to the loss of her fathers trusted
job, her mothers beloved apartment, for which she had waited so many years through the dark
times. She could not destroy her young brothers chances of a good education and prospects. And
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 40
finally, she could not bear to know that she would never see her beloved homeland again.
So she left, and he watched from the shadows as she slipped back into the East through the last
uncompleted section
in the Wall, sad and lonely and heartbrokenand very, very beautiful.
He had never seen her again, and he had never mentioned her to anyone, guarding her memory with
his quiet Scottish secretiveness. He had never let on that he had loved and still loved a Russian girl
calledValentina who had been a secretary−
stenographer with the Soviet delegation to the Four
Power Conference in Berlin. And that, as he well knew, was far out against the rules.
AfterValentina, Berlin had palled. A year later he was transferred by Reuters to Paris, and it was two
years after that, when he was back in London again, kicking his heels in the head office on Fleet
Street, that a civilian he had known in Berlin, a man who had worked at the British headquarters
there, Hitlers old Olympic stadium, had made a point of looking him up and renewing their
acquaintance. There had been a dinner, and another man had joined them. The acquaintance
from
the stadium had excused himself and left during coffee. The newcomer had been friendly and
noncommittal.
But by the second brandy he had made his point.
Some of my associates in the Firm, he had said with disarming
diffidence, were wondering if
you could do us a little favor.
That was the first time Munro had heard the term the Firm. Later he would learn the terminology.
To those in the Anglo−American alliance of intelligence services, a strange and guarded but
ultimately vital alliance, the SIS was always called the Firm. To its employees, those in the
counterintelligence arm, or MI5, were the Colleagues. The CIA at Langley, Virginia, was the
Company, and its staff the Cousins. On the opposite side worked the Opposition, whose
headquarters in Moscow were at No. 2 Dzerzhinsky Square, named after Feliks Dzerzhinsky,
Lenins secret−police boss and the founder of the old Cheka. This building would always be known
as the Center, and the territory east of the Iron Curtain as the Bloc.
The meeting in the London restaurant was in December 1964, and the proposal, confirmed later in a
small flat in Chelsea, was for alittle run into the Bloc. He made it in the spring of 1965 while
ostensibly covering the Leipzig Fair in East Germany. It was a pig of a run.
He left Leipzig at the right time and drove to the meet in Dresden, close by the Albertinium
Museum. The package in his inner pocket felt like five Bibles, and everyone seemed to be looking at
him. The East German Army officer who knew where the Russians were locating their tactical
rockets in the Saxon hillsides showed up half an hour late, by which time two officers of the
Peoples Police undoubtedlywere watchinghim. The swap of packages went off all right, somewhere
in the bushes of the nearby park. Then he returned to his car and set off southwest for theGéra
Crossroads and the Bavarian
border checkpoint. On the outskirts of Dresden a local driver rammed
him from the front offside, although Munro had the right−of−way. He had not even had time to
transfer the package to the hiding place between the trunk and the back seat; it was still in the breast
pocket of his blazer.
There were two gut−wrenching hours in a local police station, every moment dreading the command
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 41
Turn out your pockets, please,mein Herr. There was enough up against his breastbone to collect
him twenty−five years in Potma labor camp. Eventually he was allowed to go. Then the battery went
flat and four policemen had to push−start him.
The front offside wheel was screaming from a fractured roller bearing inside the hub, and it was
suggested he might like to stay overnight and get it mended. He pleaded that his visa time expired at
midnightwhich it didand set off again. He made the checkpoint on theSaale River betweenFlauen
in East Germany andHof in the West at ten minutes before midnight, having driven at twenty miles
per hour all the way, rending the night air with the screaming of the front wheel. When he chugged
past the Bavarian guards on the other side, he was wet with sweat.
A year later he left Reuters and accepted a suggestion to sit for the Civil Service Entrance
examinations as a late entrant.
He was twenty−nine.
The CSE examinations are unavoidable for anyone trying to join the Civil Service. Based on the
results, the Treasury has first choice of the cream, which enables that department to foul up the
British economy with impeccable academic references. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office get
next choice, and as Munro had a First he had no trouble entering the foreign service, usually the
cover for staffers of the Firm.
In sixteen years he had specialized in economic intelligence matters and the Soviet Union, though he
had never been there before. He had had foreign postings in Turkey, Austria, and Mexico. In 1967,
just turned thirty−one, he had married. But after the honeymoon it had been an increasingly loveless
union, a mistake, and it was quietly ended six years later. Since then there had been affairs, of
course, and they were all known to the Firm, but he had stayed single.
There was one affair he had never mentioned to the Firm, and had the fact of it, and his covering up
of it, leaked out, he would have been fired on the spot.
On joining the service, like everyone else, he had to write a complete life story of himself, followed
by a vivavoce examination
by a senior officer. (This procedure is repeated every five years of
service. Among the matters of interest are inevitably
any emotional or social involvement with
personnel from behind the Iron Curtainor anywhere else, for that matter.)
The first time he was asked, something inside him rebelled, as it had in the olive grove on Cyprus.
He knew he was loyal, that he would never be suborned over the matter ofValentina,
even if the
Opposition knew about it, which he was certain
they did not. If an attempt were ever made to
blackmail him over it, he would admit it and resign, but never accede. He just did not want the
fingers of other men, not to mention filing clerks, rummaging through a part of the most private
inside of him.Nobody owns me but me! So he said No to the question, and broke the rules. Once
trapped by the lie, he had to stick with it. He repeated it three times in sixteen years. Nothing had
ever happened because of it, and nothing ever would happen. He was certain of it. The affair was a
secret, dead and buried. It would always be so.
Had he been less deep in his reverie, he might have noticed something. From a private box high in
the left−hand wall of the theater, he was being observed. Before the lights went up for the entracte,
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 42
the watcher had vanished.
The thirteen men who grouped around the Politburo table in the Kremlin the following day were
subdued and watchful, sensing that the report of the professor of agronomy could trigger a faction
fight such as there had not been since Khrushchev fell.
Rudin as usual surveyed them all through his drifting spire of cigarette smoke. Petrov of Party
Organizations was in his usual seat to his left, with Ivanenko of the KGB beyond him. Rykov of
Foreign Affairs shuffled his papers; Vishnayev the Party theoretician and Kerensky of the Red Army
sat in stony silence. Rudin surveyed the other seven, calculating which way they would jump if it
came to a fight.
There were the three non−Russians: Vitautas the Balt, from Vilnius, Lithuania; Chavadze the
Georgian, from Tbilisi; and Mukhamed the Tajik, an Oriental and born a Muslim. The presence of
each was a sop to the minorities, but in fact each had paid the price to be there. Each, Rudin knew,
was completely
russified; the price had been high, higher than a Great Russian would have had to
pay. Each had been First Party Secretary for his republic, and two still were. Each had supervised
programs of vigorous repression against their fellow nationals,
crushing dissidents, nationalists,
poets, writers, artists, intelligentsia, and workers who had even hinted at a less than one hundred
percent acceptance of the rule of Great Russia over them. None could go back without the protection
of Moscow, and each would side, if it came to it, with the faction
that would ensure his
survivalthat is, the winning one. Rudin did not relish the prospect of a faction fight, but he had held
it in mind since he had first read Professor Yakovlevs report in the privacy of his study.
That left four more, all Russians. There were Komarov of the Agriculture Ministry, still extremely ill
at ease; Stepanov, head of the trade unions; Shushkin, responsible for liaison with foreign
Communist parties worldwide; and Petryanov, with special responsibilities for economics and
industrial planning.
Comrades, began Rudin slowly, you have all studied the Yakovlev report at your leisure. You
have all observed Comrade
Komarovs separate report to the effect that next September
and
October our aggregate grain yield will fall short of target by close to one hundred forty million tons.
Let us consider first questions first. Can the Soviet Union survive for one year on no more than one
hundred million tons of grain?
The discussion lasted an hour. It was bitter, acrimonious, but virtually unanimous. Such a shortage of
grain would lead to privations that had not been seen since the Second World War. If the state
bought even an irreducible minimum to make bread for the cities, the countryside would be left with
almost nothing. The slaughter of livestock, as the winter snows covered the grazing lands and the
beasts were left without forage or feed grains, would strip the Soviet Union of every four−footed
animal. It would take a generation to recover the livestock herds. To leave even the minimum of
grain on the land would starve the cities.
At last Rudin cut them short.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 43
Very well. If we insist on accepting the famine, both in grains and, as a consequence, in meat
several months later, what will be the outcome in terms of national discipline?
Petrov broke the ensuing silence. He admitted that there already existed a groundswell of restiveness
among the broad masses of the people, evidenced by a recent rash of small outbreaks of disorder and
resignations from the Party, all reported
back to him in the Central Committee through themillion
tendrils of the Party machine. In the face of a true famine, many Party cadres could side with the
proletariat.
The non−Russians nodded in agreement. In their republics Moscows grip was always likely to be
less total then inside the RSFSR itself.
We could strip the six East European satellites, suggested Petryanov, not even bothering to refer
to the East Europeans as fraternal comrades.
Poland and Rumania would burst into flame for a start, countered Shushkin, the liaison man with
Eastern Europe. Probably Hungary to follow suit.
The Red Army could deal with them, snarled Marshal Kerensky.
Not three at a time. Not nowadays, said Rudin.
We are still talking only of a total acquisition of ten million
tons, said Komarov. Its not
enough.
Comrade Stepanov? asked Rudin.
The head of the state−controlled trade unions chose his words carefully.
In the event of genuine famine this winter and next spring through summer, he said, studying his
pencil, it would not be possible to guarantee the absence of the outbreak of acts of disorder, perhaps
on a wide scale.
Ivanenko, sitting quietly, gazing at the Western king−size filter between his right forefinger and
thumb, smelled more than smoke in his nostrils. He had scented fear many times: in the arrest
procedures, in the interrogation rooms, in the corridors of his craft. He smelled it now. He and the
men around him were powerful, privileged, protected. But he knew them all well; he had the files.
And he, who knew no fear for himself, as the soul−dead know no fear, knew also that they all feared
one thing more than war itself. If the Soviet
proletariat, long−suffering, patient, oxlike in the face of
deprivation, ever went berserk ...
All eyes were on him. Public acts of disorder, and the repression of them, were his territory.
I could, he said evenly, cope with one Novocherkassk. There was a hiss of indrawn breath
down the table. I could cope with ten, or even twenty. But the combined resources of the KGB
could not cope with fifty.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 44
The mention of Novocherkassk brought the specter right out of the wallpaper, as he knew it would.
On June 2, 1962, almost exactly twenty years earlier, the great industrial city of Novocherkassk had
erupted in worker riots. But twenty years had not dimmed the memory.
It had started when by a stupid coincidence one ministry raised the price of meat and butter while
another cut wages at the giant NEVZ locomotive works by thirty percent. In the resulting riots the
shouting workers took over the city for three days, an unheard−of phenomenon in the Soviet Union.
Equally unheard of, they booed the local Party leaders into trembling self−imprisonment in their own
headquarters, shouted down a full general, charged ranks of armed soldiers, and pelted advancing
tanks with mud until the vision slits clogged up and the tanks ground to a halt.
The response of Moscow was massive. Every single line, every road, every telephone, every track in
and out of Novocherkassk
was sealed so the news could not leak out. Two divisions of KGB special
troops had to be drafted to finish off the affair and mop up the rioters. There were eighty−six
civilians
shot down in the streets, over three hundred wounded. None ever returned home; none was
buried locally. Not only the wounded but every single member of every family of a dead or wounded
man, woman, or child was deported to the camps of Gulag lest they persist in asking after their
relatives and thus keep memory of the affair alive. Every trace was wiped out, but two decades later
it was still well remembered inside the Kremlin.
When Ivanenko dropped his bombshell, there was silence again around the table. Rudin broke it.
Very well, then. The conclusion seems inescapable. We will have to buy from abroad as never
before. Comrade Komarov, what is the minimum we would need to buy abroad to avoid disaster?
Comrade Secretary−General, if we leave the irreducible minimum in the countryside and use every
scrap of our thirty million tons of national reserve, we will need fifty−five million tons of grain from
outside. That would mean the entire surplus,
in a year of bumper crops, from both the United States
and Canada, Komarov answered.
Theyll never sell it to us! shouted Kerensky.
They are not fools, Comrade Marshal, Ivanenko cut in quietly. Their Condor satellites must have
warned them already
that something is wrong with our spring wheat. But they cannot know what or
how much. Not yet. But by the autumn they will have a pretty fair idea. And they are greedy,
endlessly greedy for more money. I can raise the production
levels in the gold mines of Siberia and
Kolyma, ship more labor there from the camps of Mordovia. The money for such a purchase we can
raise.
I agree with you on one point, said Rudin, but not on the other, Comrade Ivanenko. They may
have the wheat, we may have the gold, but there is a chance, just a chance, that this time they will
require concessions.
At the wordconcessions, everyone stiffened.
What kinds of concessions? asked Marshal Kerensky suspiciously.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 45
One never knows until one negotiates, said Rudin, but its a possibility we have to face. They
might require concessions
in military areas. ...
Never! shouted Kerensky, on his feet and red−faced.
Our options are somewhat closed, countered Rudin. We appear to have agreed that a severe and
nationwide famine is not tolerable. It would set back the progress of the Soviet Union and thence the
global rule of Marxism−Leninism by a decade, maybe more. We need the grain; there are no more
options. If the imperialists exact concessions in the military field, we may have to accept a drawback
lasting two or three years, but only in order all the better to advance after the recovery.
There was a general murmur of assent. Rudin was on the threshold of carrying his meeting. Then
Vishnayev struck. He rose slowly as the buzz subsided.
The issues before us, Comrades, he began with silky reasonableness,
are massive, with
incalculable consequences. I propose that this is too early to reach any binding conclusion. I propose
an adjournment until two weeks from today, while we all think over what has been said and
suggested.
His ploy worked. He had bought his time, as Rudin had privately feared he would. The meeting
agreed, ten against three, to adjourn without a resolution.
Yuri Ivanenko had reached the ground floor and was about to step into his waiting limousine when
he felt a touch at his elbow. Standing beside him was a tall, beautifully tailored major of the Kremlin
guard.
The Comrade Secretary−General would like a word with you in his private suite, Comrade
Chairman, he said quietly. Without another word he turned and headed down a corridor leading
along the building away from the main doorway. Ivanenko followed. As he tailed the majors
perfectly fitting barathea jacket, fawn whipcord trousers, and gleaming boots, it occurred to him that
if any one of the men of the Politburo
came to sit one day in the Penal Chair, the subsequent arrest
would be carried out by his own KGB special troops, called Border Guards, with their bright green
cap bands and shoulder boards, the sword−and−shield insignia of the KGB above the peaks of their
caps.
But if he, Ivanenko alone, were to be arrested, the KGB would not be given the job, as they had not
been trusted almost
thirty years earlier to arrest Lavrenti Beria. It would be these elegant, disdainful
Kremlin elite guards, the praetorians at the seat of ultimate power, who would do the job. Perhaps
the self−assured major walking before him; he would have no qualms at all.
They reached a private elevator, ascended to the third floor again, and Ivanenko was shown into the
private apartments of Maxim Rudin.
Stalin had lived in seclusion right in the heart of the Kremlin,
but Malenkov and Khrushchev had
ended the practice, preferring to establish themselves and most of their cronies in luxury apartments
in a nondescript (from the outside) complex
of apartment blocks at the far end of
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 46
KutuzovskyProspekt.
But when Rudins wife had died two years earlier, he had moved back to the
Kremlin.
It was a comparatively modest apartment for this most powerful of men: six rooms, including a
well−equipped kitchen, marble bathroom, private study, sitting room, dining room, and bedroom.
Rudin lived alone, ate sparingly, dispensed
with most luxuries, and was cared for by an elderly
cleaning woman and the ever−present Misha, a hulking but silent−moving ex−soldier who never
spoke but was never far away. When Ivanenko entered the study at Mishas silent gesture,
he found
Maxim Rudin and Vassili Petrov already there. Rudin waved him to a vacant chair, and began
without preamble.
Ive asked you both here because there is trouble brewing and we all know it, he rumbled. Im
old and I smoke too much. Two weeks ago I went out to see the quacks at Kuntsevo. They took some
tests. Now they want me back again.
Petrov shot Ivanenko a sharp look. The KGB chief was still impassive. He knew about the visit to
the super−exclusive clinic in the woods southwest of Moscow; one of the doctors there reported back
to him.
The question of the succession hangs in the air, and we all know it, Rudin continued. We all also
know, or should, that Vishnayev wants it.
Rudin turned to Ivanenko.
If he gets it, Yuri Aleksandrovich, and hes young enough, that will be the end of you. He never
approved of a professional taking over the KGB. Hell put his own man, Krivoi, in your place.
Ivanenko steepled his hands and gazed back at Rudin. Three years earlier Rudin had broken a long
tradition in Soviet
Russia of imposing a political Party luminary as chairman
and chief of the KGB.
Shelepin, Semichastny, Andropovthey had all been Party men placed over the KGB from outside
the service. Only the professional Ivan Serov had nearly made it to the top through a tide of blood.
Then Rudin had plucked Ivanenko from among the senior deputies to Andropov and favored him as
the new chief.
That was not the only break with tradition. Ivanenko was young for the job of the worlds most
powerful policeman and spymaster. Then again, he had served as an agent in Washington twenty
years earlier, always a basis for suspicion among thexenophobes of the Politburo. He had a taste for
Western elegance in his private life. And he was reputed, though none dared mention it, to have
certain private reservations
about dogma. That, for Vishnayev at least, was absolutely
unforgivable.
If he takes over, now or ever, that will also mark your cards, Vassili Alekseevich, Rudin told
Petrov. In private he was prepared to address both hisprotégés familiarly by using their patronymics,
but never in public session.
Petrov nodded that he understood. He and Anatoly Krivoi had worked together in the Party
Organizations Section of the General Secretariat of the Central Committee. Krivoi had been older
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 47
and senior. He had expected the top job, but when it fell vacant, Rudin had preferred Petrov for the
post that sooner or later carried the ultimate accolade, a seat on the all−powerful Politburo. Krivoi,
embittered, had accepted the courtship of Vishnayev and had taken a post as the Party theoreticians
chief of staff and right−hand man. But Krivoi still wanted Petrovs job.
Neither Ivanenko nor Petrov had forgotten that it was Vishnayevs predecessor as Party theoretician,
Mikhail Suslov, who had put together the majority that had toppled Khrushchev in 1964. Rudin let
his words sink in.
Yuri, you know my successor cannot be you, not with your background. Ivanenko inclined his
head; he had no illusions
on that score. But, Rudin resumed, you and Vassili together can keep
this country on a steady course if you stick together and behind me. Next year Im going, one way
or the other. And when I go, I want you, Vassili, in this chair.
The silence between the two younger men was electric. Neither could recall any predecessor of
Rudins ever having been so forthcoming. Stalin had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage
and had
probably been finished off by his own Politburo
as he prepared to liquidate them all; Beria had tried
for power and been arrested and shot by his fearful colleagues; Malenkov had fallen in disgrace, as
had Khrushchev; Brezhnev had kept them all guessing until the last minute.
Rudin stood up to signal the reception was at an end.
One last thing, he said. Vishnayev is up to something. Hes going to try to do a Suslov on me
over this wheat foul−up. If he succeeds, were all finishedperhaps Russia, toobecause hes an
extremist. Hes impeccable on theory but impossible on practicalities. Now I have to know what
hes doing, what hes going to spring, whom hes trying to enlist. Find out for me. Find out in
fourteen days.
The headquarters of the KGB, the Center, is a huge stone complex of office blocks taking up the
whole northeastern facade of Dzerzhinsky Square at the top end of Karl MarxProspekt. The complex
is actually a hollow square, the front and both wings being devoted to the KGB, the rear block being
Lubyanka interrogation center and prison. The proximity
of the one to the other, with only the inner
courtyard separating
them, enables the interrogators to stay well on top of their work.
The chairmans office is on the third floor, left of the main doorway. But he always comes by
limousine with chauffeur and bodyguard through the side gateway. The office is a big, ornate room
with mahogany−paneled walls and luxurious Oriental
carpets. One wall carries the required portrait
of Lenin, another a picture of Feliks Dzerzhinsky himself. Through the four tall, draped, bulletproof
windows overlooking the square, the observer must look at yet another representation of the
Chekas founder, standing twenty feet tall in bronze in the center of the square, sightless eye staring
down Karl MarxProspekt to Revolution Square.
Ivanenko disliked the heavy, fustian, overstuffed, and brocaded
decor of Soviet officialdom, but
there was little he could do about the office. The desk alone, of the furniture inherited
from his
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 48
predecessor, Andropov, he appreciated. It was immense and adorned with seven telephones. The
most important was the Kremlevka, linking him directly with theKremlin and Rudin. Next was the
Vertushka, in KGB green, which connected him with other Politburo members and the Central
Committee. Others joined him through high−frequency
circuits to the principal KGB representatives
throughout
the Soviet Union and the East European satellites. Still others went directly to the
Ministry of Defense and its intelligence
arm, the GRU. All through separate exchanges. It was on
this last one that he took the call he had been waiting ten days for, that afternoon three days before
the end of June.
It was a brief one, from a man who called himself Arkady. Ivanenko had instructed the exchange to
put Arkady straight through. The conversation was short.
Better face−to−face, said Ivanenko shortly. Not now, not here. At my house, this evening. He
put the phone down.
Most senior Soviet leaders never take their work home with them. In fact, almost all Russians have
two distinct personae; they have their official life and their private life, and never, if possible, shall
the twain meet. The higher one gets, the greater the divide. As with the Mafia dons, whom the
Politburo
chiefs remarkably resemble, wives and families are simply not to be involved, even by
listening to business talk, in the usually less−than−noble affairs that make up official life.
Ivanenko was different, the main reason he was distrusted by the risen apparatchiks of the Politburo.
For the oldest reason
in the world, he had no wife and family. Nor did he choose to live near the
others, most of them content to dwell cheek by jowl with each other in the apartments on the western
end of KutuzovskyProspekt during the week, and in neighboring villas grouped around Zhukovka
and Usovo on weekends. Members of the Soviet elite never like to be too far from each other.
Soon after taking over the KGB, Yuri Ivanenko had found a handsome old house in the Arbat, the
once fine residential quarter of central Moscow, favored before the Revolution by merchants. Within
six months, teams of KGB builders, painters,
and decorators had restored itan impossible feat in
Soviet
Russia save for a Politburo member.
Having restored the building to its former elegance, albeit with the most modern security and alarm
devices, Ivanenko had no trouble, either, in furnishing it with the ultimate in Soviet statusWestern
furniture. The kitchen was the last cry in California−convenient, the entire room flown to Moscow
from Los Angeles in packing crates. The living room and bedroom were paneled in Swedish pine via
Finland, and the bathroom was sleek in marble and tile. Ivanenko himself occupied
only the upper
floor, which was a self−contained suite of rooms and also included his studymusic room with its
wall−to−wall stereo deck by Phillips and a library of foreign and forbidden books in English, French,
and German, all of which he spoke. There was a dining room off the living room, and a sauna off the
bedroom to complete the floor area of the upper story.
The staff of chauffeur, bodyguard, and personal valet, all KGB men, lived on the ground floor, which
also housed the garage. Such was the house to which he returned after work and awaited his caller.
Arkady, when he came, was a thickset, ruddy−faced man in civilian clothes, though he would have
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER TWO 49
felt more at home in his usual uniform of brigadier general on the Red Army General
Staff. He was
one of Ivanenkos agents inside the Army. He hunched forward on his chair in Ivanenkos sitting
room, perched on the edge as he talked. The spare KGB chief leaned back at ease, asking a few
questions, making the occasional
note on a jotting pad. When the brigadier had finished, he thanked
him and rose to press a wall button. In seconds, the door opened as Ivanenkos valet, a young blond
guard of startling good looks, arrived to show the visitor out by the door in the side wall.
Ivanenko considered the news for a long time, feeling increasingly
tired and dispirited. So that was
what Vishnayev was up to. He would tell Maxim Rudin in the morning.
He had a lengthy bath, redolent of an expensive London bath oil, wrapped himself in a silk robe, and
sipped an old French brandy. Finally he returned to the bedroom, turned out the lights, barring only a
small lantern in the corner, and stretched himself on the wide coverlet. Picking up the telephone
by
the bedside, he pressed one of the call buttons. It was answered instantly.
Valodya, he said quietly, using the affectionate diminutive
of Vladimir, come up here, will you,
please?

Chapter Three


THE POLISH AIRLINES twin−jet dipped a wing over the wide sweep of the Dnieper River and
settled into its final approach
to Borispil Airport outside Kiev, capital of the Ukraine. From his
window seat, Andrew Drake looked down eagerly at the sprawling city beneath him. He was tense
with excitement.
Along with the other hundred−plus package tourists from London who had staged through Warsaw
earlier in the day, he queued nearly an hour for passport control and customs. At the immigration
control he slipped his passport under the plate−glass window and waited. The man in the booth was
in uniform, Border Guard uniform, with the green band around his cap and the sword−and−shield
emblem of the KGB above its peak. He looked at the photo in the passport, then stared hard at
Drake.
An ... drev ... Drak? he asked.
Drake smiled and bobbed his head.
Andrew Drake, he corrected gently. The immigration man glowered back. He examined the visa,
issued in London, tore off the incoming half, and clipped the exit visa to the passport. Then he
handed it back. Drake was in.
On the Intourist motor coach from the airport to the seventeen−
story Lybid Hotel, he took stock
again of his fellow passengers. About half were of Ukrainian extraction, excited and innocent,
visiting the land of their fathers. The other half were of British stock, just curious tourists. All
seemed to have British passports. Drake, with his English name, was part of the second group. He
had given no indication he spoke fluent
Ukrainian and passable Russian.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER THREE 50
During the ride they met Ludmilla, their Intourist guide for the tour. She was a Russian, and spoke
Russian to the driver, who, though a Ukrainian, replied in the same language.
As the motor coach
left the airport she smiled brightly and in reasonable English began to describe the tour ahead of
them.
Drake glanced at his itinerary: two days in Kiev, trotting around the eleventh−century Cathedral of
St. Sophia (A wonderful example of Kievan−Rus architecture, where Prince Yaroslav the Wise is
buried, warbled Ludmilla from up front) and Golden Gate, not to mention Vladimir Hill, the State
University, the Academy of Sciences, and the Botanical Gardens. No doubt, thought Drake bitterly,
no mention would be made of the 1964 fire at the Academy Library, in which priceless manuscripts,
books, and archives devoted to Ukrainian national literature, poetry, and culture had been destroyed;
no mention that the fire brigade failed to arrive for three hours; no mention that the fire was set by
the KGB itself as their answer to the nationalistic writings of the Sixtiers.
After Kiev, there would be a day trip by hydrofoil to Kanev, then a day in Ternopol, where a man
called Miroslav Kaminsky would certainly not be a subject for discussion, and finally the tour would
go on to Lvov.
As he had expected, he heard only Russian on the streets of the intensively russified capital city of
Kiev. It was not until
Kanev and Ternopol that he heard Ukrainian spoken extensively.
His heart
sang to hear it spoken so widely by so many people, and his only regret was that he had to keep
saying Im sorry, do you speak English? But he would wait until he could visit the two addresses
that he had memorized so well he could say them backward.
Five thousand miles away, the President of the United States was in conclave with his security
adviser, Poklewski, Robert Benson of the CIA, and a third man, Myron Fletcher, chief analyst of
Soviet grain affairs in the Department of Agriculture.
Bob, are you sure beyond any reasonable doubt that General
Taylors Condor reconnaissance and
your ground reports point to these figures? Matthews asked, his eye running once again down the
columns of numbers in front of him.
The report that his intelligence chief had presented to him viaStanislaw Poklewski five days earlier
consisted of a breakdown
of the entire Soviet Union into one hundred grain−producing
zones.
From each zone a sample square, ten miles by ten, had been seenin close−up and its grain problems
analyzed. From the hundred portraits, his experts had drawn up the nationwide grain forecast.
Mr. President, if we err, it is on the side of caution, of giving the Soviets a better grain crop than
they have any right to expect, replied Benson.
The President looked across at the man from the Department
of Agriculture.
Dr. Fletcher, how does this break down in laymans terms?
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Well, sir, Mr. President, for a start, one has to deduct, at the very minimum, ten percent of the gross
harvest to produce
a figure of usable grain. Some would say we should deduct twenty percent. This
modest ten−percent figure is to account for moisture content, foreign matter like stones and grit, dust
and earth, losses in transportation, and wastage through inadequate storage facilities, which we know
they suffer from badly.
Starting from there, one then has to deduct the tonnages the Soviets have to keep on the land itself,
right in the countryside,
before any state procurements can be made to feed the industrial masses.
You will find my table for this on the second page of my separate report.
President Matthews flicked over the sheets before him and examined the table. It read:
1. Seed Grain.The tonnage the Soviets must put by for replanting next year, both for winter wheat
and spring−sown wheat ... 10 million tons
2. Human Consumption.The tonnage that must be set aside to feed the masses who inhabit the
rural areas, the state and collective farms, and all suburban unitsfrom hamlets, through villages, up
to towns of less than 5,000 population ... 28 million tons
3. Animal Feed.The tonnage that must be set aside for the feeding of the livestock through the
winter months until the spring thaw ... 52 million tons
4. Irreducible Total... 90 million tons
5. Representing a gross total, prior to a 10 percent unavoidable wastage deduction, of ... 100
million tons
I would point out, Mr. President, went on Fletcher, that these are not generous figures. They are
the absolute minima required before they start feeding the cities. If they cut down on the human
rations, the peasants will simply consume the livestock, with or without permission. If they cut back
on animal
feed, the livestock slaughter will be wholesale; theyll have a meat glut in the winter,
then a meat famine for three to four years.
Okay, Dr. Fletcher, Ill buy that. Now what about their reserves?
We estimate they have a national reserve of thirty million tons. It is unheard of to use up the whole
of it, but if they did, that would give them an extra thirty million tons. And theyshould have twenty
million tons left over from this years crop available for the citiesa grand total for their cities
of
fifty million.
The President swung back to Benson.
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CHAPTER THREE 52
Bob, what do they have to have by way of state procurements
to feed the urban millions?
Mr. President, 1977 was their worst year for a long time, the year they perpetrated the Sting on
us. They had a total crop of one hundred ninety−four million tons. They bought sixty−eight million
tons from their own farms. Theystill needed to buy twenty million from us by subterfuge. Even in
1975, their worst year for a decade and a half, they needed seventy million tons for the cities. And
that led to savage shortages. With a greater population now than then, the state must buy no less than
eighty−five million tons.
Then, concluded the President, by your figures, even if they use the total of their national
reserve, they are going to need thirty to thirty−five million tons of foreign grain?
Right, Mr. President, cut in Poklewski. Maybe even more. And we and the Canadians are the
only people who are going to have it. Dr. Fletcher?
The man from the Department of Agriculture nodded. It appears North America is going to have a
bumper crop this year. Maybe fifty million tons over domestic requirements for both us and Canada
considered together.
Minutes later, Dr. Fletcher was escorted out. The debate resumed. Poklewski pressed his point.
Mr. President, this time we have to act. We have to require
a quid pro quo from them this time
around.
Linkage? asked the President suspiciously. I know your thoughts on that, Stan. Last time it
didnt work; it made things worse. I will not have another repeat of the Jackson Amendment.
All three men recalled the fate of that piece of legislation with little joy. At the end of 1974 Congress
had passed a compromise trade−reform bill; its passage had been delayed by a controversial section
that specified in effect that unless the Soviets went easier on the question of Russian−Jewish
emigration to Israel, there would be no U.S. trade credits for the purchase of technology and
industrial goods. The Politburo
under Brezhnev had contemptuously rejected the pressure, launched
a series of predominantly anti−Jewish show trials, and bought their requirements, with trade credits,
from Britain, Germany, and Japan.
The point about a nice little spot of blackmail, Sir Nigel Irvine, who was in Washington in 1975,
had remarked to Bob Benson, is that you must be sure the victim simply cannot do without
something that you have, and cannot acquire it anywhere else.
Poklewski had learned of this remark from Benson and repeated
it to President Matthews, avoiding
the wordblackmail.
Mr. President, this time around they cannot get their wheat elsewhere. Our wheat surplus is no
longer a trading matter. It is a strategic weapon. It is worth ten squadrons of nuclear bombers. There
is no way we would sell nuclear technology to Moscow for money. I urge you to invoke the Shannon
Act.
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In the wake of the Sting of 1977, Congress had, finally and belatedly, in 1980 passed the Shannon
Act. This said simply that, in any year, the federal government had the right to exercise
an option to
buy the entire U.S. grain surplus at the going rate per ton at the time of the announcement that it
wished to do so.
The grain speculators had hated it, but the farmers had gone along. The act smoothed out some of the
wilder fluctuations
in world grain prices. In years of glut, the farmers got prices for their grain that
were too low; in years of shortage, the prices were exceptionally high. The Shannon Act ensured that
if the government exercised its option the farmers would get a fair price but the speculators would be
out of business. The act also gave the administration a gigantic new weapon in dealing with customer
countries: the aggressive as well as the humble and poor.
Very well, said President Matthews, I will invoke the Shannon Act. I will authorize the use of
federal funds to buy the futures for the expected surplus of fifty million tons of grain.
Poklewski was jubilant.
You wont regret it, Mr. President. This time, the Soviets will have to deal directly with your
administration, not with middlemen. We have them over a barrel. There is nothing else they can do.
Yefrem Vishnayev had a different opinion. At the outset of the Politburo meeting, he asked for the
floor and got it.
No one here, Comrades, denies that the famine that faces us is not acceptable. No one denies that
the surplus foods lie in the decadent capitalist West. It has been suggested that the only thing we can
do is to humble ourselves, possibly grant concessions that will reduce our military might and thereby
delay the onward march of Marxism−Leninism in order to buy these surpluses to tide us over.
Comrades, I disagree, and I ask you to join me in rejection
of the course of yielding to blackmail
and betraying our great inspirator, Lenin. There is one other wayone other way in which we can
obtain acceptance by the entire Soviet people of rigid rationing at the minimum−subsistence level,
promote a nationwide upsurge of patriotism and self−sacrifice, and secure an imposition of that
discipline without which we cannot get through the hunger that has to come.
There is a way in which we can use what little harvest grain we shall cull this autumn, spin out the
national reserve until the spring next year, use the meat from our herds and flocks in place of grain,
and then, when all is used, turn to Western Europe, where the milk lakes are, where the
beef−and−butter mountains are, where the national reserves of ten wealthy nations are.
And buy them? asked Foreign Minister Rykov ironically.
No, Comrade, replied Vishnayev softly. Take them. I yield the floor to Comrade Marshal
Kerensky. He has a file he would wish each of us to examine.
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Twelve thick files were passed around. Kerensky kept his own and began reading aloud from it.
Rudin left his unopened
in front of him and smoked steadily. Ivanenko also left his on the table and
contemplated Kerensky. He and Rudin had known for four days what the file would contain. In
collaboration
with Vishnayev, Kerensky had brought out of the General Staffs safe the file for
Plan Aleksandr, named after Field Marshal Aleksandr Suvorov, the great and never defeated Russian
commander. Now the plan had been brought right up to date.
And it was impressive, as Kerensky spent the next two hours reading it During the following May
the usual massive spring maneuvers of the Red Army in East Germany would be bigger than ever,
but with a difference. These would be no maneuvers, but the real thing. On command, all thirty
thousand
tanks and armored personnel carriers, mobile guns and amphibious craft would swing
westward, hammer across the Elbe, and plow into West Germany, heading for France and the
Channel ports.
Ahead of them, fifty thousand paratroops would drop over fifty locations to take out the principal
tactical nuclear airfields
of the French inside France and the Americans and British on German soil.
Another hundred thousand would drop on the four countries of Scandinavia to control the capital
cities and main transportation arteries, with massive naval backup from offshore.
The military thrust would avoid the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, whose governments, all partners
with the Euro−Communists in office, would be ordered by the Soviet Ambassador
to stay out of the
fight or perish by joining in. Within half a decade later, they would fall like ripe plums, anyway.
Likewise Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia. Switzerland would be avoided, Austria used only as a
through−route. Both would later be islands in a Soviet sea, and would not last long.
The primary zone of attack and occupation would be the three Benelux countries, France, and West
Germany. Britain, as a prelude, would be crippled by strikes and confused by the extreme Left,
which on instructions would mount an immediate
clamor for nonintervention. London would be
informed
that if the nuclear Strike Command were used east of the Elbe, Britain would be wiped off
the face of the map.
Throughout the entire operation the Soviet Union would be stridently demanding an immediate
cease−fire in every capital in the world and in the United Nations, claiming the hostilities
were local
to West Germany, temporary, and caused entirely
by a West German preemptive strike toward
Berlin, a claim that most of the non−German European Left would believe
and support.
And the United States, all this time? Petrov interrupted. Kerensky looked irritated at being
stopped in full flow after ninety minutes.
The use of tactical nuclear weapons right across the face of Germany cannot be excluded, pursued
Kerensky, but the overwhelming majority of them will destroy West Germany,
East Germany, and
Polandno loss, of course, for the Soviet Union. Thanks to the weakness of Washington, there is no
deployment of either Cruise missiles or neutron bombs. Soviet military casualties are estimated at
between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand at the maximum.
But as two million men
in all three services will be involved,
such percentages will be acceptable.
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Duration? asked Ivanenko.
The point units of the forward mechanized armies will enter
the French Channel ports one hundred
hours after crossing the Elbe. At that point, of course, the cease−fire may be allowed to operate. The
mopping up can take place under the cease−fire.
Is that time scale feasible? asked Petryanov.
This time, Rudin cut in.
Oh yes, its feasible, he said mildly. Vishnayev shot him a suspicious look.
I still have not had an answer to my question, Petrov pointed out. What about the United States?
What about their nuclear strike forces? Not tactical missiles. Strategic missiles. The hydrogen−bomb
warheads in their ICBMs, their bombers, and their submarines.
The eyes around the table riveted on Vishnayev. He rose again.
The American President must, at the outset, be given three solemn assurances in absolutely credible
form, he said. One: that for her part the USSR will never be the first to use thermonuclear
weapons. Two: that if the three hundred thousand American troops in Western Europe are committed
to the fight, they must take their chances in conventional or tactical nuclear warfare with ours. Three:
that in the event the United States resorts to ballistic missiles aimed at the Soviet
Union, the top
hundred cities of the United States will cease to exist.
President Matthews, Comrades, will not trade New York for the decadence of Paris, nor Los
Angeles for Frankfurt. There will beno American thermonuclear riposte.
The silence was heavy as the perspectives sank in. The vast storehouse of food, including grain, of
consumer goods and technology that was contained in Western Europe. The fall like ripe plums of
Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Greece, and Yugoslavia within a few years. The treasure trove of gold
beneath the streets of Switzerland. The utter isolation of Britain
and Ireland off the new Soviet
coast. The domination without a shot fired of the entire Arab bloc and Third World. It was a heady
mixture.
Its a fine scenario, said Rudin at last But it all seems to be based on one assumption: that the
United States will not rain her nuclear warheads on the Soviet Union if we promise not to let ours
loose on her. I would be grateful to hear if Comrade Vishnayev has any corroboration for that
confident declaration. In short, is it a proved fact or a fond hope?
More than a hope, snapped Vishnayev. A realistic calculation.
As capitalists and bourgeois
nationalists, the Americans will always think of themselves first. They are paper tigers, weak and
indecisive. Above all, when the prospect of losing their own lives faces them, they are cowards.
Are they indeed? mused Rudin. Well now, Comrades, let me attempt to sum up. Comrade
Vishnayevs scenario is realistic in every sense, but it all hangs on his hopeI beg his pardon, on his
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calculationthat the Americans will not respond
with their heavy thermonuclear weapons. Had we
ever believed this before, we would surely already nave completed the process of liberating the
captive masses of Western Europe
from fascism−capitalism to Marxism−Leninism. Personally,
I
perceive no new element to justify the calculation of Comrade Vishnayev.
However, neither he nor the Comrade Marshal has ever had any dealings with the Americans, or
ever been in the West Personally, I have, and I disagree. Let us hear from Comrade Rykov.
The elderly and veteran Foreign Minister was white−faced.
All this smacks of Khrushchevism, as in the case of Cuba. I have spent thirty years in foreign
affairs. Ambassadors around the world report to me, not to Comrade Vishnayev. None of them, not
onenot one single analyst in my department
has a single doubt that the American President would
use the thermonuclear response on the Soviet Union. Nor do I. It is not a question of exchanging
cities. He, too, can see that the outcome of such a war would be domination by the Soviet Union of
almost the whole world. It would be the end of America as a superpower, as a power, as anything
other than a nonentity. They would devastate the Soviet Union before
they yielded Western Europe
and thence the world.
I would point out that if they did, said Rudin, we could not stop them. Our high−energy−particle
laser beams from space satellites are not fully functional yet. One day we will no doubt be able to
vaporize incoming rockets in inner space before they can reach us. But not yet The latest assessments
of our expertsour experts, Comrade Vishnayev, not our optimists
suggest a full−blown
Anglo−American thermonuclear strike would take out one hundred million of our citizensmostly
Great Russiansand devastate sixty percent of the Soviet Union from Poland to the Urals. But to
continue. Comrade Ivanenko, you have experience of the West. What do you say?
Unlike Comrades Vishnayev and Kerensky, observed Ivanenko, I control hundreds of agents
throughout the capitalist
West. Their reports are constant I, too, have no doubt at all that the
Americans would respond.
Then let me put it in a nutshell, said Rudin brusquely. The time for sparring was over. If we
negotiate with the Americans for wheat we may have to accede to demands that could set us back by
five years. If we tolerate the famine, we will probably be set back by ten years. If we launch a
European
war, we could be wiped out, certainly set back by twenty to forty years.
I am not the theoretician that Comrade Vishnayev undoubtedly
is. But I seem to recall the
teachings of Marx and Lenin are very firm on one point: that while the pursuit of the world rule of
Marxism−Leninism must be pursued at every
stage by every means, its progress should not be
endangered
by the incurring of foolish risks. I estimate this plan as being based on a foolish risk.
Therefore I propose that we
I propose a vote, said Vishnayev softly.
So that was it. Not a vote of no confidence in him, thought Rudin. That would come later if he lost
this round. The faction
fight was out in the open now. He had not had the feeling so clearly in years
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that he was fighting for his life. If he lost, there would be no graceful retirement, no retaining the
villas and the privileges as Mikoyan had done. It would be ruin, exile, perhaps the bullet in the nape
of the neck. But he kept his composure. He put his own motion first. One by one, the hands went up.
Rykov, Ivanenko, Petrovall voted for him and the negotiation
policy. There was hesitancy down
the table. Who had Vishnayev got to? What had he promised them?
Stepanov and Shushkin raised their hands. Last, slowly, came Chavadze the Georgian. Rudin put the
countermotion, for war in the spring. Vishnayev and Kerensky, of course, were for it. Komarov of
Agriculture joined them. Bastard, thought Rudin, it was your bloody ministry that got us into this
mess. Vishnayev must have persuaded the man that Rudin
was going to ruin him in any case, so he
thought he had nothing to lose. Youre wrong, my friend, thought Rudin, face impassive, Im going
to have your entrails for this. Petryanov raised his hand. Hes been promised the prime ministership,
thought Rudin. Vitautas the Balt and Mukhamed the Tajik also went with Vishnayev for war. The
Tajik would know that if nuclear war came, the Orientals would rule over the ruins. The Lithuanian
had been bought.
Six for each proposal, he said quietly. And my own vote for the negotiations.
Too close, he thought. Much too close.
It was sundown when the meeting dissolved. But the faction
fight, all knew, would now go on until
it was resolved; no one could back away now, no one could stay neutral anymore.
It was not until the fifth day of the tour that the party arrived
in Lvov and stayed at the Intourist
Hotel. Up to this point, Drake had gone with all the guided tours on the itinerary,
but this time he
made an excuse that he had a headache and wished to stay in his room. As soon as the party left by
motor coach for St. Nicholas Church, he changed into more casual clothes and slipped out of the
hotel.
Kaminsky had told him the sort of clothes that would pass without attracting attention: socks with
sandals over them, light trousers, not too smart, and an open−necked shirt of the cheaper variety.
Witha street map he set off on foot for the seedy, poor, working−class suburb of Levandivka. He had
not the slightest doubt that the two men he sought would treat him with the profoundest suspicion,
once he found them. And this was hardly surprising when one considered the family backgrounds
and circumstances that had forged them. He recalled what Miroslav Kaminsky, lying in his Turkish
hospital bed, had told him.
On September 29, 1966, near Kiev, at the gorge of Babi Yar, where over fifty thousand Jews had
been slaughtered by the SS in Nazi−occupied Ukraine in 1941−42, the Ukraines foremost
contemporary poet, Ivan Dzyuba, gave an address that was remarkable inasmuch as a Ukrainian
Catholic was speaking out powerfully against anti−Semitism.
Anti−Semitism has always flourished in the Ukraine, and successive rulerstsars, Stalinists, Nazis,
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Stalinists again, and their successorshave vigorously encouraged it to flourish.
Dzyubas long speech began as a seeming plea for remembrance
of the slaughtered Jews of Babi
Yar, a straight condemnation
of Nazism and fascism. But as it developed, his theme began to
encompass all those despotisms which, despite their technological triumphs, brutalize the human
spirit and seek to persuade even the brutalized that this is normal.
We should therefore judge each society, he said, not by its external technical achievements but
by the position and meaning it gives to man, by the value it puts on human dignity
and human
conscience.
By the time he reached this point, the Chekisti who had infiltrated
the silent crowd had realized the
poet was not talking about Hitlers Germany at all; he was talking about the Politburo
s Soviet
Union. Shortly after the speech, he was arrested.
In the cellars of the local KGB barracks, the chief interrogator,
the man who had at his beck and call
the two hulks in the corners of the room, the ones gripping the heavy, three−foot−long rubber hoses,
was a fast−rising young colonel of the Second Chief Directorate, sent in from Moscow. His name
was Yuri Ivanenko.
But at the address at Babi Yar there had been, in the front row, standing next to their fathers, two
small boys, age ten. They did not know each other then, and would meet and become
firm friends
only six years later on a building site. One was Lev Mishkin; the other was David Lazareff.
The presence of both the fathers of Mishkin and Lazareff at the meeting had also been noted, and
when, years later, they applied for permission to emigrate to Israel, both were accused of anti−Soviet
activities and drew long sentences in labor camps.
Their families lost their apartments, the sons any hope of attending a university. Though highly
intelligent, they were destined for pick−and−shovel work. Now both twenty−six, these were the
young men Drake sought among the hot and dusty byways of Levandivka.
It was at the second address that he found David Lazareff, who, after Drake had introduced himself,
treated him with extreme suspicion. But he agreed to bring his friend Lev Mishkin to a rendezvous
since Drake knew both their names, anyway.
That evening Drake met Mishkin, and the pair regarded him with something close to hostility. He
told them the whole story of the escape and rescue of Miroslav Kaminsky, and his own background.
The only proof he could produce was the photograph of himself and Kaminsky together, taken in the
hospital room at Trabzon with a Polaroid camera by a nursing
orderly. Held up in front of them was
that days edition of the local Turkish newspaper. Drake had brought the same newspaper as
suitcase lining and showed it to them as proof of his story.
Look, he said finally, if Miroslav had been washed up in Soviet territory and been taken by the
KGB, if he had talked and revealed your names, and if I were from the KGB, Id hardly be asking
for your help.
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The two Jewish workers agreed to consider his request overnight. Unknown to Drake, both Mishkin
and Lazareff had long shared an ideal close to his ownthat of striking one single, powerful blow of
revenge against the Kremlin hierarchy
in their midst. But they were near to giving up, weighed
down by the hopelessness of trying to do anything without outside help.
Impelled by their desire for an ally beyond the borders of the USSR, the two shook hands in the
small hours of the morning and agreed to take the Anglo−Ukrainian into their confidence. The
second meeting was that afternoon, Drake having skipped another guided tour. For safety they
strolled through wide, unpaved lanes near the outskirts of the city, talking quietly in Ukrainian. They
told Drake of their desire also to strike at Moscow in a single, deadly act.
The question iswhat? said Drake. Lazareff, who was the more silent and more dominant of the
pair, spoke.
Ivanenko, he said. The most hated man in the Ukraine.
What about him? asked Drake.
Kill him.
Drake stopped in his tracks and stared at the dark−haired, intense young man.
Youd never get near him, he said finally.
Last year, said Lazareff, I was working on a job here in Lvov. Im a house painter, right? We
were redecorating the apartment of a Party bigwig. There was a little old woman staying with them.
From Kiev. After shed gone, the Party mans wife mentioned who she was. Later I saw a letter
postmarked
Kiev in the letter box. I took it, and it was from the old woman. It had her address on
it.
So who was she? asked Drake.
His mother.
Drake considered the information. You wouldnt think people like that had mothers, he said.
But youd have to watch her flat for a long time before he might come to visit her.
Lazareff shook his head. Shes the bait, he said, and outlined
his idea. Drake considered the
magnitude of it.
Before coming to the Ukraine, he had envisaged the great single blow he had dreamed of delivering
against the might of the Kremlin in many terms, but never this. To assassinate the head of the KGB
would be to strike into the very center of the Politburo, to send hairline cracks running through every
corner of the power structure.
It might work, he conceded.
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If it did, he thought, it would be hushed up at once. But if the news ever got out, the effect on
popular opinion, especially
in the Ukraine, would be traumatic.
It could trigger the biggest uprising there has ever been here, he said.
Lazareff nodded. Alone with his partner Mishkin, far away from outside help, he had evidently given
the project a lot of thought.
True, he said.
What equipment would you need? asked Drake.
Lazareff told him. Drake nodded.
It can all be acquired in the West, he said. But how to get it in?
Odessa, cut in Mishkin. I worked on the docks there for a while. The place is completely
corrupt. The black market is thriving. Every Western ship brings seamen who do a vigorous
illegal
trade in Turkish leather jackets, suede coats, and denim jeans. We would meet you there. It is inside
the Ukraine; we would not need internal passports.
Before they parted, they agreed to the plan. Drake would acquire the equipment and bring it to
Odessa by sea. He would alert Mishkin and Lazareff by a letter, posted inside the Soviet Union, well
in advance of his own arrival. The wording would be innocent. The rendezvous in Odessa was to bea
café that Mishkin knew from his days as a teenage laborer there.
Two more things, said Drake. When it is over, the publicity
for it, the worldwide announcement
that it has been done, is vitalalmost as important as the act itself. And that means that you
personally must tell the world. Only you will have the details to convince the world of the truth. But
that means you must escape from here to the West.
It goes without saying, murmured Lazareff. We are both Refuseniks. Like our fathers before us,
we have tried to emigrate to Israel and have been refused. This time we will go, with or without
permission. When this is over, we have to get to Israel. It is the only place we will ever be safe, ever
again. Once there, we will tell the world what we have done and leave those bastards in the Kremlin
and the KGB discredited
in the eyes of their own people.
The other point follows from the first, said Drake. When it is done, you must let me know by
coded letter or postcard. In case anything goes wrong with the escape. So that I can try to help get
the news to the world.
They agreed that an innocently worded postcard would be sent from Lvov toa poste restante address
in London. With the last details memorized, they parted, and Drake rejoined his tour group.
Two days later Drake was back in London. The first thing he did was buy the worlds most
comprehensive book on small arms. The second was to send a telegram to a friend in Canada, one of
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the best of that elite private list he had built up over the years of émigrés who thought as he did of
carrying
their hatred to the enemy. The third was to begin preparations for a long−dormant plan to
raise the needed funds by robbing a bank.
At the far end of KutuzovskyProspekt on the southeastern outskirts of Moscow, a driver pulling to
the right off the main boulevard onto the Rublevo Road will come twenty kilometers
later to the
little village of Uspenskoye, in the heart of the weekend−villa country. In the great pine and birch
forests around Uspenskoye lie such hamlets as Usovo and Zhukovka, where stand the country
mansions of the Soviet elite. Just beyond Uspenskoye Bridge over the Moscow River is a beach
where in summer the lesser−privileged but nevertheless very well off (they have their own cars)
come from Moscow to bathe from the sandy beach.
The Western diplomats come here, too, and it is one of the rare places where a Westerner can be
cheek by jowl with ordinary
Muscovite families. Even the routine KGB tailing of Western
diplomats seems to let up on Sunday afternoons in high summer.
Adam Munro came here with a party of British Embassy staffers that Sunday afternoon, July 11,
1982. Some of them were married couples, some single and younger than he. Shortly before three,
the whole party of them left their towels and picnic baskets among the trees, ran down the low bluff
toward the sandy beach, and swam. When he came back, Munro picked up his rolled towel and
began to dry himself. Something fell out of it.
He stooped to pick it up. It was a small pasteboard card, half the size of a postcard, white on both
sides. On one side was typed, in Russian, the words: Three kilometers north of here is an
abandoned chapel in the woods. Meet me there in thirty minutes. Please. It is urgent.
He maintained his smile as one of the embassy secretaries came over, laughing, to ask for a cigarette.
While he lit it for her, his mind was working out all the angles he could think of. A dissident wanting
to pass over the underground literature?
A load of trouble, that. A religious group wanting asylum in
the embassy? The Americans had had that in 1978, and it had caused untold problems. A trap set by
the KGB to identify the SIS man inside the embassy? Always possible. No ordinary commercial
secretary would accept such an invitation,
slipped into a rolled towel by someone who had
evidently
tailed him and watched from the surrounding woods. And yet it was too crude for the
KGB. They would have set up a pretended defector in central Moscow with information to pass,
arranged for secret photographs at the handover point. So who was the secret writer?
He dressed quickly, still undecided.
Finally he pulled on his shoes and made up his mind. If it was a trap, then he had received no
message and was simply walking in the forest. To the disappointment of his hopeful secretary he set
off alone. After a hundred yards he paused, took out his lighter and burned the card, grinding the ash
into the carpet of pine needles.
The sun and his watch gave him due north, away from the riverbank, which faced south. After ten
TheDevil'sAlternative
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minutes he emerged on the side of a slope and saw the onion−shaped dome of a chapel two
kilometers farther on across the valley. Seconds later he was back in the trees.
The forests around Moscow have dozens of such small chapels, once the worshiping places of the
villagers, now mainly derelict, boarded up, deserted. The one he was approaching
stood in its own
clearing among the trees, beside a derelict cemetery. At the edge of the clearing he stopped and
surveyed the tiny church. He could see no one. Carefully he advanced into the open. He was a few
yards from the sealed front door when he saw the figure standing in deep shadow under an archway.
He stopped, and for minutes on end the two stared at each other.
There was really nothing to say, so he just said her name.Valentina.
She moved out of the shadow and replied, Adam.
Twenty−one years, he thought in wonderment She must be turned forty. She looked like thirty, still
raven−haired, beautiful,
and ineffably sad.
They sat on one of the tombstones and talked quietly of the old times. She told him she had returned
from Berlin to Moscow a few months after their parting, and had continued to be a stenographer for
the Party machine. At twenty−three she had married a young Army officer with good prospects.
After seven years there had been a baby, and they had been happy, all three of them. Her husbands
career had flourished,
for he had an uncle high in the Red Army, and patronage
is no different in
the Soviet Union from anywhere else. The boy was now ten.
Five years before, her husband, having reached the rank of colonel at a young age, had been killed in
a helicopter crash while surveying Red Chinese troop deployments along the Ussuri River in the Far
East. To kill the grief she had gone back to work. Her husbands uncle had used his influence to
secure her good, highly placed work, bringing with it privileges
in the form of special food shops,
special restaurants, a better apartment, a private carall the things that go with high rank in the Party
machine.
Finally, two years before, after special clearance, she had been offered a post in the tiny, closed
group of stenographers and typists, a subsection of the General Secretariat of the Central Committee,
that is called the Politburo Secretariat.
Munro breathed deeply. That was high, very high, and very trusted.
Who, he asked, is the uncle of your late husband?
Kerensky, she murmured.
Marshal Kerensky? he asked. She nodded. Munro exhaled slowly. Kerensky, the ultrahawk.
When he looked again at her face, the eyes were wet. She was blinking rapidly, on the verge of tears.
On an impulse he put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him. He smelled her hair,
the same sweet odor that had made him feel both tender and excited two decades ago, in his youth.
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Whats the matter? he asked gently.
Oh, Adam, Im so unhappy.
In Gods name, why? In your society you have everything.

She shook her head slowly, then pulled away from him. She avoided his eye, gazing across the
clearing into the woods.
Adam, all my life, since I was a small girl, I believed. I truly believed. Even when we loved, I
believed in the goodness,
the lightness, of socialism. Even in the hard times, the times of
deprivation in my country, when the West had all the consumer riches and we had none, I believed in
the justice
of the Communist ideal that we in Russia would one day bring to the world. It was an
ideal that would give us all a world without fascism, without money−lust, without exploitation,
without war.
I was taught it, and I really believed it. It was more important
than you, than our love, than my
husband and child. It meant as much to me as this country, Russia, which is part of my soul.
Munro knew about the patriotism of the Russians toward their country, a fierce flame that would
make them endure any suffering, any privation, any sacrifice, and which, when manipulated, would
make them obey their Kremlin overlords without demur.
What happened? he asked quietly.
They have betrayed it Are betraying it. My ideal, my people, and my country.
They? he asked.
She was twisting her fingers until they looked as if they would come off.
The Party chiefs, she said bitterly. She spat out the Russian
slang word meaning fat cats:
Thenachalstvo.
Munro had twice witnessed a recantation. When a true believer
loses the faith, the reversed
fanaticism goes to strange extremes.
I worshiped them, Adam. I respected them. I revered them. Now, for years, I have lived close to
them all. I have lived in their shadow, taken their gifts, been showered with their privileges. I have
seen them close up, in private; heard them talk about the people, whom they despise. They are
rotten,
Adam, corrupt and cruel. Everything they touch they turn to ashes.
Munro swung one leg across the tombstone so he could face her, and took her in his arms. She was
crying softly.
I cant go on, Adam, I cant go on, she murmured into his shoulder.
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All right, my darling, do you want me to try to get you out?
He knew it would cost him his career, but this time he was not going to let her go. It would be worth
it; everything would be worth it.
She pulled away, her face tear−streaked.
I cannot. I cannot leave. I have Sasha to think about.
He held her quietly for a while longer. His mind was racing.
How did you know I was in Moscow? he asked carefully.
She gave no hint of surprise at the question. It was in any case natural enough for him to ask it.
Last month, she said between sniffs, I was taken to the ballet by a colleague from the office. We
were in a box. When the lights were low, I thought I must be mistaken. But when they went up at
intermission, I knew it was really you. I could not stay after that. I pleaded a headache and left
quickly.
She dabbed her eyes, the crying spell over.
Adam, she asked eventually, did you marry?
Yes, he said. Long after Berlin. It didnt work. We were divorced years ago.
She managed a little smile. Im glad, she said. Im glad there is no one else. That is not very
logical, is it?
He grinned back at her.
No, he said. It is not. But it is nice to hear. Can we see each other? In the future?
Her smile faded; there was a hunted look in her eyes. She shook her dark head.
No, not very often, Adam, she said. I am trusted, privileged,
but if a foreigner came to my
apartment, it would soon be noticed and reported on. The same applies to your apartment.
Diplomats are watchedyou know that. Hotels are watched also; no apartments are for rent here
without impossible
formalities. It will be difficult, Adam, very difficult.
Valentina,you arranged this meeting. You took the initiative.
Was it just for old times sake? If
you do not like your life here, if you do not like the men you work for ... But if you cannot leave
because of Sasha, then what is it you want?
She composed herself and thought for a while. When she spoke, it was quite calmly.
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CHAPTER THREE 65
Adam, I want to try to stop them. I want to try to stop what they are doing. I suppose I have for
several years now, but since I saw you at the Bolshoi, and remembered all the freedom we had in
Berlin, I began thinking about it more and more. Now I am certain. Tell me if you canis there an
intelligence officer in your embassy?
Munro was shaken. He had handled two defectors−in−place, one from the Soviet Embassy in
Mexico City, the other in Vienna.
One had been motivated by a conversion from respect
to hatred
for his own regime, likeValentina; the other by bitterness at lack of promotion. The former had been
the trickier to handle.
I suppose so, he said slowly. I suppose there must be.
Valentinarummaged in the shoulder bag on the pine needles by her feet. Having made up her mind,
she was apparently
determined to go through with her betrayal. She withdrew a thick, padded
envelope.
I want you to give this to him, Adam. Promise me you will never tell him who it came from.
Please, Adam. I am frightened by what I am doing. I cannot trust anyone but you.
I promise, he said. But I have to see you again. I cant Just see you walk away through the gap
in the wall as I did last time.
No, I cannot do that again, either. But do not try to contact
me at my apartment. It is in a walled
compound for senior
functionaries, with a single gate in the wall and a policeman at it. Do not try to
telephone me. The calls are monitored. And I will never meet anyone else from your embassy,
not
even the intelligence chief.
I agree, said Munro. But when can we meet again?
She considered for a moment. It is not always easy for me to get away. Sasha takes up most of my
spare time. But I have my own car and I am not followed. Tomorrow I must go away for two weeks,
but we can meet here, four Sundays from today. She looked at her watch. I must go, Adam. I am
one of a house party at a dacha a few miles from here.
He kissed her on the lips, the way it used to be. And it was as sweet as it had ever been. She rose and
walked away across the clearing. When she reached the fringe of the trees, he called after her.
Valentina,what is in this? He held up the package.
She paused and turned.
My job, she said, is to prepare the verbatim transcripts of the Politburo meetings, one for each
member. And the digests
for the candidate members. From the tape recordings. That is a copy of the
recording of the meeting of June tenth.
Then she was gone into the trees. Munro sat on the tombstone
and looked down at the package.
Bloody hell, he said.

Chapter Four


ADAM MUNRO sat in a locked room in the main building of the British Embassy on Maurice
Thorez Embankment and listened to the last sentences of the tape recording on the machine in front
of him. The room was safe from any chance of electronic surveillance by the Russians, which was
why he had borrowed it for a few hours from the head of Chancery.
... goes without saying that this news does not pass outside
those present in this room. Our next
meeting will be a week from today.
The voice of Maxim Rudin died away, and the tape hissed on the machine, then stopped. Munro
switched it off. He leaned back and let out a long, low whistle.
If it was true, it was bigger than anything Oleg Penkovsky had brought over, twenty years before.
The story of Penkovsky
was folklore in the SIS, the CIA, and, most of all, in the bitterest memories
of the KGB. He was a brigadier general in the GRU, with access to the highest information, who,
disenchanted with the Kremlin hierarchy, had approached first the Americans and then the British
with an offer to provide information.
The Americans had turned him down, suspecting a trap. The British had accepted him, and for two
and a half years run him until he was trapped by the KGB, exposed, tried, and shot. In his time he
had brought over a golden harvest of secret information, but most of all at the time of the October
1962 Cuban missile crisis. In that month the world had applauded
the exceptionally skillful handling
by President John F. Kennedy of the eyeball−to−eyeball confrontation with Nikita Khrushchev over
the matter of the planting of Soviet missiles in Cuba. What the world had not known was that the
exact strengths and weaknesses of the Russian leader were already
in the Americans hands, thanks
to Penkovsky.
When it was finally over, the Soviet missiles were out of Cuba, Khrushchev was humbled, Kennedy
was a hero, and Penkovsky was under suspicion. He was arrested in November.
Within a year, after
a show trial, he was dead. That same winter of 1963 Kennedy, too, died, just thirteen months after
his triumph. And within two years Khrushchev had fallen, toppled by his own colleagues, ostensibly
because of his failure in the grain policy, in fact because his adventurism had scared the daylights out
of them. The democrat, the despot, and the spy had all left the stage. But even Penkovsky had never
got right inside the Politburo.
Munro took the spool off the machine and carefully rewrapped it. The voice of Professor Yakovlev
was, of course, unknown to him, and most of the tape was of him reading his report. But in the
discussion following the professor,
there were ten voices, and three at least were identifiable. The
low growl of Rudin was well enough known; the high tones of Vishnayev, Munro had heard before,
watching televised
speeches by the man to Party congresses; and the bark of Marshal Kerensky he
had heard at May Day celebrations, as well as on film and tape.
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His problem, when he took the tape back to London for voiceprint analysis, as he knew he must, was
how to cover his source. He knew if he admitted to the secret rendezvous in the forest, following the
typed note in the bathing towel, the question would be asked: Why you, Munro? How did she know
you? It would be impossible to avoid that question, and equally impossible to answer it. The only
solution was to devise an alternative source, credible and uncheckable.
He had been in Moscow only six weeks, but his unsuspected
mastery of even slang Russian had
paid a couple of dividends.
At a diplomatic reception in the Czech Embassy two weeks earlier, he
had been in conversation with an Indianattaché
when he had heard two Russians in muttered
conversation
behind him. One of them had said, Hes a bitter bastard. Thinks he should have had
the top slot.
He had followed the gaze of the two who had spoken, and noted they were observing and
presumably talking about a Russian across the room. The guest list later confirmed the man was
Anatoly Krivoi, personal aide and right−hand man to the Party theoretician, Vishnayev. So what had
he got to be bitter about? Munro checked his files and came up with Krivois history. He had
worked in the Party Organizations Section of the Central Committee; shortly after the nomination
of
Petrov to the top job, Krivoi had appeared on Vishnayevs staff. Quit in disgust? Personality conflict
with Petrov? Bitter at being passed over? They were all possible, and all interesting to an intelligence
chief in a foreign capital.
Krivoi, he mused. Maybe. Just maybe. He, too, would have access, at least to Vishnayevs copy of
the transcript, maybe even to the tape. And he was probably in Moscow; certainly his boss was.
Vishnayev had been present when the East German
Premier had arrived a week before.
Sorry, Anatoly, youve just changed sides, he said as he slipped the fat envelope into an inside
pocket and took the stairs to see the head of Chancery.
Im afraid I have to go back to London with the Wednesday
bag, he told the diplomat. Its
unavoidable, and it cant wait.
Chancery asked no questions. He knew Munros job and promised to arrange it. The diplomatic bag,
which actuallyisa bag, or at least a series of canvas sacks, goes from Moscow to London every
Wednesday and always on the British Airways
flight, never Aeroflot. A Queens Messenger, one of
that team of men who constantly fly around the world from London
picking up embassy bags and
who are protected by the insignia of the crown and greyhound, comes out from London
for it. The
very secret material is carried in a hard−frame dispatch box chained to the mans left wrist; the more
routine stuff in the canvas sacks, the Messenger personally checks into the aircrafts hold. Once
there, it is on British territory. But in the case of Moscow, the Messenger is accompanied by an
embassy staffer.
The escort job is sought after, since it permits a quick trip home to London, a bit of shopping, and a
chance of a good night out. The Second Secretary who lost his place in the rota that week was
annoyed but asked no questions.
The following Wednesday, British Airways Airbus−300B lifted out of the new, post−1980 Olympics
TheDevil'sAlternative
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terminal at Sheremetyevo Airport and turned its nose toward London. By Munros side the
Messenger, a short, dapper, ex−Army major, withdrew straight into his hobby, composing crossword
puzzles for a major newspaper.
You have to do something to while away these endless airplane flights, he told Munro. We all
have our in−flight hobbies.
Munro grunted and looked back over the wing tip at the receding city of Moscow. Somewhere down
there in the sundrenched
streets, the woman he loved was working and moving
among people she
had betrayed. She was on her own right out in the cold.
The country of Norway, seen in isolation from its eastern neighbor, Sweden, looks like a great
prehistoric fossilized human
hand stretching down from the Arctic toward Denmark and Britain. It
is a right hand, palm downward to the ocean, a stubby thumb toward the east clenched into the
forefinger. Up the crack between thumb and forefinger lies Oslo, its capital.
To the north the fractured forearm bones stretch up to Tromsø andHammerfest, deep in the Arctic, so
narrow that in places there are only forty miles from the sea to the Swedish border. On a relief map,
the hand looks as if it has been smashed by some gigantic hammer of the gods, splintering
bones
and knuckles into thousands of particles. Nowhere is this breakage more marked than along the west
coast, where the chopping edge of the hand would be.
Here the land is shattered into a thousand fragments, and between the shards the sea has flowed in to
form a million creeks, gullies, bays, and gorgeswinding, narrow defiles where the mountains fall
sheer to glittering water. These are the fjords, and it was from the headwaters of these that a race of
men came out a thousand years ago who were the best sailors ever to set keel to the water or sail to
the wind. Before their age was over, they had sailed to Greenland and Iceland, conquered Ireland,
settled Britain and Normandy, navigated as far as North America. They were the Vikings, and their
descendants still live and fish along the fjords of Norway.
Such a man wasThor Larsen, sea captain and ships master,
who strode that mid−July afternoon
past the royal palace in the Swedish capital of Stockholm from his companys head office back to
his hotel. People tended to step aside for him; he was six feet three inches tall, broad as the
pavements of the old quarter of the city, blue−eyed, and bearded. Being ashore, he was in civilian
clothes, but he was happy, because he had reason to think, after visiting the head office of the Nordia
Line, which now lay behind him along the Ship Quay, that he might soon have a new command.
After six months attending a course at the companys expense
in the intricacies of radar, computer
navigation, and supertanker technology, he was dying to get back to sea again. The summons to the
head office had been to receive from the hands of the personal secretary to the proprietor, chairman,
and managing director of the Nordia Line his invitation
to dinner that evening. The invitation also
included Larsons wife, who had been informed by telephone and was flying in from Norway on a
company ticket. The Old Man was splashing out a bit, thought Larsen. There must be something in
the wind.
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He took his rented car from the hotel parking lot across the bridge on Nybroviken and drove the
thirty−seven kilometers
to the airport. When Lisa Larsen arrived in the concourse
with her
overnight bag, he greeted her with the delicacy of an excited St. Bernard, swinging her off her feet
like a girl. She was small and petite, with dark, bright eyes, soft chestnut curls, and a trim figure that
belied her thirty−eight years. And he adored her. Twenty years earlier, when he had been a gangling
second mate of twenty−seven, he had met her one freezing winter day in Oslo. She had slipped on
the ice; he had picked her up like a doll and set her back on her feet.
She had been wearing a fur−trimmed hood that almost hid her tiny, red−nosed face, and when she
thanked him, he could see only her eyes, looking out of the mass of snow and fur like the bright eyes
of a snow mouse in the forests of winter. Ever since, through their courtship and marriage and the
years that had followed, he had called her his little snow mouse.
He drove her back into central Stockholm, asking all the way about their home in Ålesund, far away
on Norways western coast, and of the progress of their two teenage children.
To the south a British
Airways Airbus passed by on its great−circle route from Moscow to London.Thor Larsen neither
knew nor cared.
The dinner that evening was to be in the famous Aurora Cellar, built below ground in the
cellar−storerooms of an old palace in the citys medieval quarter. WhenThor and Lisa Larsen
arrived and were shown down the narrow steps to the cellar, the proprietor, Leonard, was waiting for
them at the bottom.
Mr. Wennerstrom is already here, he said, and showed them into one of the private rooms, a
small, intimate cavern, arched in five−hundred−year−old brick, spanned by a thick table of glittering,
ancient timber, and lit by candles in cast−iron holders. As they entered, Larsens employer,Harald
Wennerstrom, lumbered to his feet, embraced Lisa, and shook hands with her husband.
Harald(Harry) Wennerstrom was something of a legend in his own lifetime among the seafaring
people of Scandinavia.
He was now seventy−five, grizzled and craggy, with bristling
eyebrows.
Just after the Second World War, when he returned to his native Stockholm, he had inherited from
his father half a dozen small cargo ships. In thirty−five years he had built up the biggest
independently owned fleet of tankers outside the hands of the Greeks and the Hong Kong Chinese,
The Nordia Line was his creation, diversifying from dry−cargo ships to tankers in the mid−fifties,
laying out the money, building the ships for the oil needs of the sixties, backing his own judgment,
often going against the grain.
They sat and ate, and Wennerstrom talked only of small things, asking after the family. His own
forty−year marriage had ended with the death of his wife four years earlier; they had had no children.
But if he had had a son, he would have liked him to be like the big Norwegian across the table from
him, a sailors sailor; and he was particularly fond of Lisa.
The salmon, cured in brine and dill in the Scandinavian way, was delicious, the tender duck from the
Stockholm salt marshes excellent It was only when they sat finishing their wineWennerstrom
unhappily sipping at his balloon glass of water (All the bloody doctors will allow me
nowadays)that he came to business.
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Three years ago,Thor, back in 1979, I made three forecasts
to myself. One was that by the end of
1982 the solidarity of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, would have broken
down. The second was that the American Presidents policy of curbing the United States
consumption
of oil energy and by−products would have failed. The third was that the Soviet Union
would have changed from a net oil exporter to a net oil importer. I was told I was crazy, but I was
right.
Thor Larsennodded. The formation of OPEC and its quadrupling of oil prices in the winter of 1973
had produced a world slump that had nearly broken the economies of the West. It had also,
paradoxically, sent the oil−tanker business into a seven−year decline, with millions of tons of tanker
space partially built, laid up, useless, uneconomic, loss−making.
It was a bold spirit who could have
seen three years earlier
the events between 1979 and 1982: the breakup of OPEC as the Arab world
split into feuding factions; the revolutionary
takeover in Iran; the disintegration of Nigeria; the rush
by the radical oil−producing nations to sell oil at any price to finance arms−buying sprees; the
spiraling increase in U.S. oil consumption based on the ordinary Americans conviction
of his
God−given right to rape the globes resources for his own comforts; and the Soviet native oil
industry peaking
at such a low production figure through poor technology and forcing Russia to
become once again an oil importer. The three factors had produced the tanker boom into which they
were now, in the summer of 1982, beginning to move.
As you know, Wennerstrom resumed, last September I signed a contract with the Japanese for a
new supertanker. Down in the marketplace they all said I was mad; half my fleet laid up in Strömstad
Sound, and I order a new one. But Im not mad. You know the story of the East Shore Oil
Company?

Larsen nodded again. A small Louisiana−based oil company
in America ten years before, it had
passed into the hands of the dynamic Clint Blake. In ten years it had grown and expanded until it was
on the verge of joining the Seven Sisters, the mastodons of the world oil cartels.
Well, in the summer of next year, 1983, Clint Blake is invading
Europe. Its a tough, crowded
market, but he thinks he can crack it. Hes putting several thousand service stations across the
motorways of Europe, marketing his own brand of gasoline and oil. And for that hell need tanker
tonnage. And Ive got it. A seven−year contract to bring crude from the Middle East to Western
Europe. Hes already building his own refinery at Rotterdam, alongside Esso, Mobil, and Chevron.
That is what the new tanker is for. Shes big and shes ultramodern and shes expensive, but shell
pay. Shell make five or six runs a year from the Persian Gulf to Rotterdam, and in five years shell
amortize the investment. But thats not the reason Im building her. Shes going to be the biggest
and the best; my flagship, my memorial. And youre going to be her skipper.
Thor Larsensat in silence. Lisas hand stole across the table and laid itself on top of his, squeezing
gently. Two years before, Larsen knew, he could never have skippered a Swedish−flag vessel, being
himself a Norwegian. But since theGöteborg Agreement of the previous year, which Wennerstrom
had helped to push through, a Swedish shipowner could apply for honorary Swedish citizenship for
exceptional Scandinavian but non−Swedish officers in his employ, so that they could be offered
captaincies. He had applied successfully on behalf of Larsen.
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CHAPTER FOUR 71
The coffee came, and they sipped it appreciatively.
Im having her built at the Ishikawajima−Harima yard in Japan, said Wennerstrom. Its the
only yard in the world that can take her. They have the dry dock.
Both men knew the days of ships being built on slipways and then being allowed to slide into the
water were long past. The size and weight factors were too great. The giants were now built in
enormous dry docks, so that when they were ready for launching, the sea was let in through dock
sluices and the ships simply floated off their blocks and rode water inside the dock.
Work began on her last November fourth, Wennerstrom told them. The keel was laid on January
thirtieth. Shes taking
shape now. Shell float next November first, and after three months at the
fitting−out berth and sea trials, shell sail on February second. And youll be on her bridge,Thor. 
Thank you, said Larsen. What are you calling her?
Ah, yes. Ive thought of that. Do you remember the sagas? Well, well name her to please Niorn,
the god of the sea. He was gripping his glass of water, staring at the flame of the candle in its
cast−iron holder before him. For Niorn controls the fire and the water, the twin enemies of a tanker
captain, the explosion and the sea herself.
The water in his glass and the flame of the candle reflected in the old mans eyes, as once fire and
water had reflected in his eyes as he sat helpless in a lifeboat in the mid−Atlantic in 1942, four cables
from his blazing tanker, his first command, watching his crew fry in the sea around him.
Thor Larsenstared at his patron, doubting that the old man could really believe this mythology; Lisa,
being a woman, knew he meant every word of it. At last Wennerstrom sat back, pushed the glass
aside with an impatient gesture,
and filled his spare glass with red wine.
So we will call her after the daughter of NiornFreya, the most beautiful of all the goddesses. We
will call herFreya. He raised his glass. To theFreya.
They all drank.
When she sails, said Wennerstrom, the world will never have seen the like of her. And when she
is past sailing, the world will never see the like of her again.
Larsen was aware that the two biggest tankers in the world were the French Shell tankersBellamya
andBatillus, both with a capacity of just over half a million tons.
What will be theFreyas deadweight? asked Larsen. How much crude will she carry?
Ah, yes, I forgot to mention that, said the old shipowner mischievously. Shell be carrying one
million tons of crude oil.
ThorLarsen heard a hiss of indrawn breath from his wife beside him.
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CHAPTER FOUR 72
Thats big, he said at last. Thats very big.
The biggest the world has ever seen, said Wennerstrom.
Two days later a jumbo jet arrived at London Heathrow from Toronto. Among its passengers it
carried one AzamatKrim, Canadian−born son of anémigré, who, like Andrew Drake, had Anglicized
his nameto Arthur Crimmins. He was one of those whom Drake had noted years before as a man
who shared his beliefs completely.
Drake was waiting to meet him as he came out of the customs
area, and together they drove to
Drakes flat, off the Bayswater Road.
AzamatKrim was a Crimean Tatar by heritage, short, dark, and wiry. His father, unlike Drakes, had
fought in the Second World Warwith the Red Army rather than against it, and had been captured in
combat by the Germans. His personal
loyalty to Russia and that of others like him had availed them
nothing. Stalin had accused the entire Tatar nation
of collaboration with the Germans, a patently
unfounded charge but one that the Soviet leader employed as an excuse to deport the Tatar people to
the east. Tens of thousands had died in the unheated cattle trucks, thousands more in the arid wastes
of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
In a German forced−labor camp, ChingrisKrim had heard of the death of his entire family. Liberated
by the Canadians in 1945, he had been lucky not to be sent back to Stalins Russia for execution or
the slave camps. He had been befriended
by a Canadian officer, a former rodeo rider from Calgary,
who one day on an Austrian horse farm had admired
the Tatar soldiers mastery of horses and
brilliant riding.
The Canadian had secured Krims authorized emigration to Canada, where he had
married and fathered a son. Azamat was the boy, now aged thirty and, like Drake, bitter against the
Kremlin for the sufferings of his fathers people.
In a small flat in Bayswater, Andrew Drake explained his plan, and the Tatar agreed to join him in it.
Together they put the final touches to securing the needed funds by taking out a bank in northern
England.
The man Adam Munro reported to at the head office was his controller, Barry Ferndale, the head of
the Soviet Section. Years before, Ferndale had done his time in the field, and had assisted in the
exhaustive debriefings of Oleg Penkovsky when the Russian defector visited Britain while
accompanying
Soviet trade delegations.
He was short and rotund, pink−cheeked and jolly. He hid his keen brain and a profound knowledge
of Soviet affairs behind
mannerisms of great cheerfulness and seeming naiveté.
In his office on the fourth floor of the Firms headquarters, he listened to the tape from Moscow
from end to end. When it was over he began furiously polishing his glasses, hopping with
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excitement.
Good gracious me, my dear fellow. My dear Adam. What an extraordinary affair. This really is
quite priceless.
If its true, said Munro carefully. Ferndale started, as if the thought had not occurred to him.
Ah, yes, of course. If its true. Now, you simply must tell me how you got hold of it.
Munro told his story carefully. It was true in every detail save that he claimed the source of the tape
had been Anatoly Krivoi.
Krivoi, yes, yes, know of him of course, said Ferndale. Well now, I shall have to get this
translated into English and show it to the Master. This could be very big indeed. You wont be able
to return to Moscow tomorrow, you know, Do you have a place to stay? Your club? Excellent. First
class. Well now, you pop along and have a decent dinner and stay at the club for a couple of days.
Ferndale called his wife to tell her he would not be home to their modest house at Pinner that
evening, but he would be spending the night in town. She knew his job and was accustomed
to such
absences.
Then he spent the night working on the translation of the tape, alone in his office. He was fluent in
Russian, without the ultrakeen ear for tone and pitch that Munro had, which denotes the truly
bilingual speaker. But it was good enough. He missed nothing of the Yakovlev report, nor of the
brief but stunned reaction that had followed it among the Politburo
members.
At ten oclock the following morning, sleepless but shaved and breakfasted, looking as pink and
fresh as he always did, Ferndale called Sir Nigel Irvines secretary on the private line and asked to
see him. He was with the Director General in ten minutes.
SirNigel Irvine read the transcript in silence, put it down, and regarded the tape lying on the desk
before him.
Is this genuine? he asked.
Barry Ferndale had dropped his bonhomie. He had known Nigel Irvine for years as a colleague, and
the elevation of his friend to the supreme post and a knighthood had changed nothing between them.
Dont know, he said thoughtfully. Its going to take a lot of checking out. Its possible. Adam
told me he met this Krivoi briefly at a reception at the Czech Embassy just over two weeks ago. If
Krivoi was thinking of coming over, that would have been his chance. Penkovsky did exactly the
same; met a diplomat on neutral ground and established a secret meeting later. Of course he was
regarded with intense suspicion
until his information checked out. Thats what I want to do here.
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Spell it out, said Sir Nigel.
Ferndale began polishing his glasses again. The speed of his circular movements with handkerchief
on the lenses, so went the folklore, was in direct proportion to the pace of his thinking, and now he
polished furiously.
Firstly, Munro, he said. Just in case it is a trap and the second meeting is to spring the trap, I
would like him to take furlough here until we have finished with the tape. The Opposition
might,
just might, be trying to create an incident between
governments.
Is he owed leave? asked Sir Nigel.
Yes, he is, actually. He was shifted to Moscow so fast at the end of May, he is owed a fortnights
summer holiday.
Then let him take it now. But he should keep in touch. And inside Britain, Barry. No wandering
abroad until this is sorted out.
Then theres the tape itself, said Ferndale. It breaks down into two parts: the Yakovlev report
and the voices of the Politburo. So far as I know, we have never heard Yakovlev
speak. So no
voiceprint tests will be possible with him. But what he says is highly specific. Id like to check that
out with some experts in chemical seed−dressing techniques. Theres an excellent section in the
Ministry of Agriculture who deal with that sort of thing. No need for anyone to know why we want
to know, but Ill have to be convinced this accident with the lindane hopper valve is feasible.
You recall that file the Cousins lent us a month ago? asked Sir Nigel. The photos taken by the
Condor satellites?
Of course.
Check the symptoms against the apparent explanation. What else?
The second section comes down to voiceprint analysis, said Ferndale. Id like to chop that
section up into bits, so no one need know what is being talked about. The language laboratory at
Beaconsfield could check out phraseology, syntax,
vernacular expressions, regional dialects, and so
forth. But the clincher will be the comparison of voiceprints.
Sir Nigel nodded. Both men knew that human voices, reduced to a series of electronically registered
blips and pulses, are as individual as fingerprints. No two are ever quite alike.
Very well, he said, but Barry, I insist on two things. For the moment, no one knows about this
outside of you, me, and Munro. If its a phony, we dont want to raise false hopes; if its not, its
high explosive. None of the technical side must know the whole. Secondly, I dont want to hear the
name of Anatoly Krivoi again. Devise a cover name for this asset and use it in future.
Two hours later Barry Ferndale called Munro after lunch at his club. The telephone line being open,
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they used the commercial parlance that was habitual.
The managing directors terribly happy with the sales report,
 Ferndale told Munro. Hes very
keen that you take a fortnights leave to enable us to break it right down and see where we go from
here. Have you any ideas for a spot of leave?
Munro hadnt, but he made up his mind. This was not a request; it was an order.
Id like to go back to Scotland for a while, he said. Ive always wanted to walk during the
summer from Lochaber up the coast to Sutherland.
Ferndale was ecstatic. The Highlands, the glens of Bonnie Scotland. So pretty at this time of year.
Never could stand physical exercise myself, but Im sure youll enjoy it. Stay in touch with
mesay, every second day. You have my home number, dont you?
A week later, Miroslav Kaminsky arrived in England on his Red Cross travel papers. He had come
across Europe by train, the ticket paid for by Drake, who was nearing the end of his financial
resources.
Kaminsky andKrim were introduced, and Kaminsky given his orders.
You learn English, Drake told him. Morning, noon, and night. Books and gramophone records,
faster than youve ever learned anything before. Meanwhile, Im going to get you some decent
papers. You cant travel on Red Cross documents forever. Until I do, and until you can make
yourself
understood in English, dont leave the flat.
Adam Munro had walked for ten days through the Highlands of Inverness, Ross, and Cromarty and
finally into Sutherland County. He had arrived at the small town of Lochinver, where the waters of
the North Minch stretch away westward to the Isle of Lewis, when he made his sixth call to Barry
Ferndales home on the outskirts of London.
Glad you called, said Ferndale down the line. Could you come back to the office? The managing
director would like a word.
Munro promised to leave within the hour and make his way as fast as possible to Inverness. There he
could pick up a flight for London.
At his home on the outskirts of Sheffield, the great steel town of Yorkshire, Norman Pickering kissed
his wife and daughter farewell that brilliant late−July morning and drove off to the bank of which he
was manager.
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CHAPTER FOUR 76
Twenty minutes later a small van bearing the name of an electrical appliance company drove up to
the house and disgorged
two men in white coats. One carried a large cardboard
carton up to the
front door, preceded by his companion bearing a clipboard. Mrs. Pickering answered the door, and
the two men went inside. None of the neighbors took any notice.
Ten minutes later the man with the clipboard came out and drove away. His companion had
apparently stayed to fix and test the appliance they had delivered.
Thirty minutes after that, the van was parked about two corners from the bank, and the driver,
without his white coat and wearing a charcoal−gray business suit, carrying not a clipboard
but a
largeattaché case, entered the bank. He proffered
an envelope to one of the women clerks, who
looked at it, saw that it was addressed personally to Mr. Pickering, and took it in to him. The
businessman waited patiently.
Two minutes later the manager opened his office door and looked out. His eye caught the waiting
businessman.
Mr. Partington? he asked. Do come in.
Andrew Drake did not speak until the door had closed behind
him. When he did, his voice had no
trace of his native Yorkshire, but a guttural edge as if it came from Europe. His hair was carrot−red,
and heavy−rimmed, tinted glasses masked his eyes to some extent.
I wish to open an account, he said, and to make a withdrawal
in cash.
Pickering was perplexed; his chief clerk could have handled this transaction.
A large account, and a large transaction, said Drake. He slid a check across the desk. It was a
bank check, the sort that can be obtained across the counter. It was issued by theHolborn, London,
branch of Pickerings own bank, and was drawn to thirty thousand pounds.
I see, said Pickering. That kind of money was definitely the managers business. And the
withdrawal?
Twenty thousand pounds in cash.
Twenty thousand pounds in cash? asked Pickering. He reached for the phone. Well, of course I
shall have to call the Holborn branch and
I dont think that will be necessary, said Drake, and pushed a copy of that mornings
LondonTimes over the desk. Pickering stared at it. What Drake handed him next caused him to stare
even more. It was a photograph, taken with a Polaroid camera. He recognized his wife, whom he had
left ninety minutes earlier, sitting round−eyed with fear in his own fireside chair. He could make out
a portion of his own sitting room. His wife held their child close to her with one arm. Across her
knees was the same issue of the LondonTimes.
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Taken sixty minutes ago, said Drake.
Pickerings stomach tightened. The photo would win no prizes for photographic quality, but the
shape of the mans shoulder in the foreground and the sawed−off shotgun pointing
at his family
was quite clear enough.
If you raise the alarm, said Drake quietly, the police will come here, not to your home. Before
they break in, you will be dead. In exactly sixty minutes, unless I make a phone call to say I am
safely away with the money, that man is going
to pull that trigger. Please dont think we are joking;
we are quite prepared to die if we have to. We are the Red Army Faction.
Pickering swallowed hard. Under his desk, a foot from his knee, was a button linked to a silent
alarm. He looked at the photograph again and moved his knee away.
Call your chief clerk, said Drake, and instruct him to open the account, credit the check to it, and
provide the check for the twenty−thousand−pound withdrawal. Tell him you have telephoned
London and all is in order. If he expresses surprise, tell him the sum is for a very big commercial
promotion campaign in which prize money will be given away in cash. Pull yourself together and
make it good.
The chief clerkwas surprised, but his manager seemed calm enough; a little subdued, perhaps, but
otherwise normal. And the dark−suited man before him looked relaxed and friendly. There was even
a glass of the managers sherry before each of them, though the businessman had kept his light
gloves onodd for such warm weather. Thirty minutes later the chief clerk brought the money from
the vault, deposited it on the managers desk, and left.
Drake packed it calmly into the attaché case.
There are thirty minutes left, he told Pickering, In twenty−five I shall make my phone call. My
colleague will leave your wife and child perfectly unharmed. If you raise the alarm before that, he
will shoot first and take his chances with the police later.
When he had gone, Pickering sat frozen for half an hour. In fact, Drake phoned the house five
minutes later from a call box.Krim took the call, smiled briefly at the woman on the floor with her
hands and ankles bound with adhesive tape, and left. Neither used the van, which had been stolen the
previous day.Krim used a motorcycle parked in readiness farther down the road. Drake took a
motorcycle helmet from the van to cover his flaming red hair, and used a second motorcycle
parked
near the van. Both were out of Sheffield within thirty minutes. They abandoned the vehicles north of
London and met again in Drakes flat, where he washed the red dye out of his hair and crushed the
eyeglasses to fragments.
Munro caught the following mornings breakfast flight south from Inverness. When the plastic trays
were cleared away, the hostess offered the passengers newspapers fresh up from London. Being at
the back of the aircraft, Munro missed theTimes and theTelegraph, but secured a copy of theDaily
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CHAPTER FOUR 78
Express. The headline story concerned two unidentified men, believed to be Germans from the Red
Army Faction, who had robbed a Sheffield bank of twenty thousand pounds.
Bloody bastards, said the English oilman from the North Sea rigs who was in the seat next to
Munro. He tapped theExpress headline. Bloody Commies. Id string them all up.
Munro conceded that upstringing would definitely have to be considered in future.
At Heathrow he took a taxi almost to the office and was shown straight into Barry Ferndales room.
Adam, my dear chap, youre looking a new man.
He sat Munro down and proffered coffee.
Well now, the tape. You must be dying to know. Fact is, mdear chap, its genuine. No doubt
about it. Everything checks. Theres been a fearful blowup in the Soviet Agriculture
Ministry. Six
or seven senior functionaries ousted, including
one we think must be that unfortunate fellow in the
Lubyanka.
That helps corroborate it. But the voices are genuine. No doubt, according to the lab boys. Now for
the big one. One of our assets working out of Leningrad managed to take a drive out of town.
Theres not much wheat grown up there in the north, but there is a little. He stopped his car for a pee
and swiped a stalk of the afflicted wheat. It came home in the bag three days ago. I got the report
from the lab last night. They confirm there is an excess of this lindane stuff present in the root of the
seedling.
So, there we are. Youve hit what our American cousins so charmingly call pay dirt. In fact,
twenty−four−carat gold. By the way, the Master wants to see you. Youre going back to Moscow
tonight.
Munros meeting with Sir Nigel Irvine was friendly but brief.
Well done, said the Master. Now, I understand your next meeting will be in a fortnight.
Munro nodded.
This might be a long−term operation, Sir Nigel resumed, which makes it a good thing you are
new to Moscow. There will be no raised eyebrows if you stay on for a couple of years. But just in
case this fellow changes his mind, I want you to press for moreeverything we can squeeze out Do
you want any help, any backup?
No, thank you, said Munro. Now that hes taken the plunge, the asset has insisted hell talk
only to me. I dont think I want to scare him off at this stage by bringing others in. Nor do I think he
can travel, as Penkovsky could. Vishnayev never travels, so theres no cause for Krivoi to, either.
Ill have to handle it alone.
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CHAPTER FOUR 79
Sir Nigel nodded. Very well, youve got it.
When Munro had gone, Sir Nigel Irvine turned over the file on his desk, which was Munros
personal record. He had his misgivings. The man was a loner, ill at ease working in a team. A man
who walked alone in the mountains of Scotland for relaxation.
There was an adage in the Firm: there are old agents and there are bold agents, but there are no old,
bold agents. Sir Nigel was an old agent, and he appreciated caution. This opportunity
had come
swinging in from the outfield, unexpected,unprepared for. And it was moving fast. But then, the tape
was genuine, no doubt of it. So was the summons on his desk to see the Prime Minister that evening
at Downing Street. He had of course informed the Foreign Secretary when the tape had passed
muster, and this was the outcome.
The black door of No. 10 Downing Street, residence of the British Prime Minister, is perhaps one of
the best−known doors in the world. It stands on the right, two−thirds down a small cul−de−sac off
Whitehall, an alley almost, sandwiched between the imposing piles of the Cabinet Office and the
Foreign
Office.
In front of this door, with its simple white figure 10 and brass knocker, attended by a single, unarmed
police constable,
the tourists gather to take each others photograph and watch the comings and
goings of the messengers and the well−known.
In fact, it is the men of words who go in through the front door; the men of influence tend to use the
side. The house called No. 10 stands at ninety degrees to the Cabinet Office block, and the rear
corners almost touch each other, enclosing
a small lawn behind black railings. Where the corners
almost
meet, the gap is covered by a passageway leading to a small side door, and it was through
this that the Director General of the SIS, accompanied by Sir Julian Flannery, the Cabinet Secretary,
passed that last evening of July. The pair were shown straight to the second floor, past the Cabinet
Room, to the Prime Ministers private study.
The Prime Minister had read the transcript of the Politburo
tape, passed to her by the Foreign
Secretary.
Have you informed the Americans of this matter? she asked directly.
Not yet, maam, Sir Nigel answered. Our final confirmation
of its authenticity is only three
days old.
I would like you to do it personally, said the Prime Minister.
Sir Nigel inclined his head. The
political perspectives of this pending wheat famine in the Soviet Union are immeasurable,
of course,
and as the worlds biggest surplus wheat producer, the United States should be involved from the
outset.
I would not wish the Cousins to move in on this agent of ours, said Sir Nigel. The running of
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CHAPTER FOUR 80
this asset may be extremely delicate. I think we should handle it ourselves, alone.
Will they try to move in? asked the Prime Minister.
They may, maam. They may. We ran Penkovsky jointly, even though it was we who recruited
him. But there were reasons
why. This time, I think we should go it alone.
The Prime Minister was not slow to see the value in political
terms of controlling such an agent as
one who had access to the Politburo transcripts.
If pressure is brought, she said, refer back to me, and I will speak to President Matthews
personally about it. In the meantime, I would like you to fly to Washington tomorrow and present
them the tape, or at least a verbatim copy of it. I intend to speak to President Matthews tonight in any
case.
Sir Nigel and Sir Julian rose to leave.
One last thing, said the Prime Minister. I fully understand
that I am not allowed to know the
identity of this agent. Will you be telling Robert Benson who it is?
Certainly not, maam. Not only would the Director General
of the SIS refuse point−blank to
inform his own Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary of the identity of the Russian,
but he would
not tell them even of Munro, who was running that agent. The Americans would know who Munro
was, but never whom he was running. Nor would there be any tailing of Munro by the Cousins in
Moscow; he would see to that as well.
Then presumably this Russian defector has a code name. May I know it? asked the Prime
Minister.
Certainly, maam. The defector is now known in every file simply as the Nightingale.
It just happened that Nightingale was the first songbird in theN section of the list of birds after which
all Soviet agents were code−named, but the Prime Minister did not know this. She smiled for the
first time.
How very appropriate

Chapter Five


JUST AFTER TEN in the morning of a wet and rainy August
1, an aging but comfortable
four−jetVC−10 of the Royal Air Force Strike Command lifted out of Lyneham base in Wiltshire and
headed west for Ireland and the Atlantic. It carried a small enough passenger complement: one air
chief marshal who had been informed the night before that this of all days was the best for him to
visit the Pentagon in Washington
to discuss the forthcoming USAF−RAF tactical bomber
exercises, and a civilian in a shabby mackintosh.
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CHAPTER FIVE 81
The air chief marshal had introduced himself to the unexpected
civilian, and learned in reply that his
companion was a Mr. Barrett of the Foreign Office who had business with the British Embassy on
Massachusetts Avenue and had been instructed
to take advantage of the VC−10 flight to save the
taxpayer the cost of a two−way air ticket. The Air Force officer
never learned that the purpose of the
RAF planes flight was in fact the other way around.
On another track south of the VC−10, a Boeing jumbo jet of British Airways left Heathrow, bound
for New York. Among its three hundred−plus passengers it bore AzamatKrim, alias Arthur
Crimmins, Canadian citizen, heading west on a buying mission, with a back pocket full of money.
Eight hours later, the VC−10 landed perfectly at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, ten miles
southeast of Washington.
As it closed down its engines on the apron, a Pentagon staff car swept up
to the foot of the steps and disgorged a two−star general of the USAF. Two Air Force Security
Police snapped to attention as the air chief marshal came down the steps to his welcoming
committee. Within five minutes the ceremonies were all over; the Pentagon limousine drove away to
Washington, the police snowdrops marched off, and the idle and curious of the air base went back
to their duties.
No one noticed the modest sedan with nonofficial plates that drove to the parked VC−10 ten minutes
laterno one, that is, with enough sophistication to note the odd−shaped aerial on the roof that
betrayed a CIA car. No one bothered with the rumpled civilian who trotted down the steps and
straight into the car moments later, and no one saw the car leave the air base.
The Company man in the U.S. Embassy on Grosvenor Square, London, had been alerted the night
before, and his coded signal to Langley had caused the car to appear. The driver was in civilian
clothes, a low−level staffer, but the man in the back who welcomed the guest from London was the
chief of the Western European Division, one of the regional subordinates of the Deputy Director for
Operations. He had been chosen to meet the Englishman because, having once headed the CIA
operation in London, he knew him well. No one likes substitutions.
Nigel, good to see you again, he said after confirming to himself that the arrival was indeed the
man they expected.
How good of you to come to meet me, Lance, responded Sir Nigel Irvine, well aware there was
nothing good about it; it was a duty. The talk in the car was of London, family, the weather. No
question of What are you doing here? The car swept along the Capital Beltway to the Woodrow
Wilson Memorial Bridge over the Potomac and headed west into Virginia.
On the outskirts of Alexandria the driver pulled right into the George Washington Memorial
Parkway, which fringes the whole western bank of the river. As they cruised past the National
Airport and Arlington Cemetery, Sir Nigel Irvine glanced out to his right at the skyline of
Washington, where years before he had been the SIS liaison man with the CIA, based in the British
Embassy. Those had been tough days, in the wake of the Philby affair, when even the state of the
weather was classified information so far as the English were concerned. He thought of what he
carried in his briefcase and permitted himself a small smile.
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CHAPTER FIVE 82
After thirty minutes cruising they pulled off the main highway, swung over it again, and headed
into the forest. He remembered the small notice saying simplyBPR−CIA and wondered again why
they had to signpost the place. You either knew where it was or you didnt, and if you didnt, you
werent invited, anyway.
At the security gate in the great seven−foot−high chain−link fence that surrounds Langley, they
halted while Lance showed his pass, then drove on and turned left past the awful conference center
known as the Igloo because that is just what it resembles.
The Companys headquarters consists of five blocks, one in the center and one at each corner of the
center block, like a rough St. Andrews cross. The Igloo is stuck onto the corner block nearest the
main gate. Passing the recessed center block, Sir Nigel noticed the imposing main doorway and the
great seal of the United States pavedin terrazzo into the ground in front of it. But he knew this front
entrance was for congressmen, senators, and other undesirables. The car swept on, past the complex,
then pulled to the right and drove around to the back.
Here there is a short ramp, protected by a steel portcullis, running down one floor to the first
basement level. At the bottom is a select garage for no more than ten cars. The black sedan came to a
halt, and the man called Lance handed Sir Nigel over to his superior,Cubarles (Chip) Allen, the
Deputy Director for Operations. They, too, knew each other well.
Set in the back wall of the garage is a small elevator, guarded by steel doors and two armed men.
Chip Allen identified
his guest, signed for him, and used a plastic card to open the elevator doors.
The elevator hummed its way quietly seven floors up to the Directors suite. Another magnetized
plastic card got them both out of the elevator, into a lobby faced by three doors. Chip Allen knocked
on the center one, and it was Bob Benson himself who, alerted from below, welcomed
the British
visitor into his suite.
Benson led him past the big desk to the lounge area in front of the beige marble fireplace. In winter
Benson liked a crackling log fire to burn here, but Washington in August is no place for fires and the
air conditioning was working overtime.
Benson pulled the rice−paper screen across the room to
separate the lounge from the office and sat back opposite his guest. Coffee was ordered, and when
they were alone, Benson finally asked, What brings you to Langley, Nigel?
Sir Nigel sipped and sat back.
We have, he said undramatically, obtained the services of a new asset.
He spoke for almost ten minutes before the Director of Central Intelligence interrupted him.
Inside the Politburo? he queried. You mean, right inside?

Let us just say, with access to Politburo meeting transcripts,
 said Sir Nigel.
Would you mind if I called Chip Allen and BenKahn in on this?
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CHAPTER FIVE 83
Not at all, Bob. Theyll have to know within an hour or so, anyway. Prevents repetition.
Bob Benson rose, crossed to a telephone on a coffee table, and made a call to his private secretary.
When he had finished
he stared out of the picture window at the great green forest. Jesus H.
Christ, he breathed.
SirNigel Irvine was not displeased that his two old contacts
in the CIA should be in on the ground
floor of his briefing. All pure intelligence agenciesas opposed to intelligence−
secret police forces
like the KGBhave two main arms. One is Operations, covering the business of actually obtaining
information; the other is Intelligence, covering the business of collating, cross−referencing,
interpreting, and analyzing
the great mass of raw, unprocessed information that is gathered in.
Both have to be good. If the information is faulty, the best analysis in the world will only come up
with nonsense; if the analysis is inept, all the efforts of the information gatherers are wasted.
Statesmen need to know what other nations, friends or potential foes, are doing and, if possible, what
they intend to do. What they are doing is nowadays often observable;
what they intend to do is not.
Which is why all the space cameras in the world will never supplant a brilliant analyst
working with
material from inside anothers secret councils.
In the CIA the two men who hold sway under the Director of Central Intelligence, who may be a
political appointee, are the Deputy Director (Operations), or DDO, and the Deputy Director
(Intelligence), or DDI. It is Operations that inspires the thriller writers; Intelligence is back−room
work, tedious, slow, methodical, and, paradoxically, often most valuable when most boring.
Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the DDO and the DDI have to work hand in hand and they have
to trust each other. Benson, as a political appointee, was lucky. His DDO was Chip Allen, WASP
and former football player; his DDI was BenKahn, Jewish chess master; they fitted together like a
pair of gloves. In five minutes both were sitting with Benson and Irvine in the lounge area. Coffee
was forgotten.
The British spymaster talked for almost an hour. He was uninterrupted. Then the three Americans
read the Nightingale
transcript and watched the tape recording in its polyethylene
bag with
something like hunger. When Irvine had finished, there was a short silence. Chip Allen broke it.
Roll over, Penkovsky, he said.
Youll want to check it all, said Sir Nigel evenly. No one dissented. Friends are friends, but ... It
took us ten days, but we cant fault it. The voiceprints check out, every one. Weve already
exchanged cables about the bustup in the Soviet
Agriculture Ministry. And of course you have your
Condor
photographs. Oh, one last thing ...
From his bag he produced a small polyethylene sack with a sprig of young wheat inside it.
One of our chaps swiped this from a field outside Leningrad.

Ill have our Agriculture Department check it out as well, said Benson. Anything else, Nigel?
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CHAPTER FIVE 84
Oh, not really, said Sir Nigel. Well, perhaps a couple of small points ...
Spit it out.
Sir Nigel drew a breath.
The Russian buildup in Afghanistan. We think they may be mounting a move toward Pakistan and
India through the passes. That we regard as our patch. Now, if you could ask Condor to have a look
...
Youve got it, said Benson without hesitation.
And then, resumed Sir Nigel, that Soviet defector you brought out of Geneva two weeks ago. He
seems to know quite a bit about Soviet assets in our trade−union movement.
We sent you transcripts of that, said Allen hastily.
Wed like direct access, said Sir Nigel.
Allen looked atKahn. Kahn shrugged.
Okay, said Benson. Can we have access to the Nightingale?

Sorry, no, said Sir Nigel. Thats different. The Nightingale
s too damn delicate, right out in
the cold. I dont want to disturb the fish just yet in case of a change of heart. Youll get everything
we get, as soon as we get it. But no moving in. Im trying to speed up the delivery and volume, but
its going to take time and a lot of care.
Whens your next delivery slated for? asked Allen.
A week from today. At least, thats the meet. I hope therell be a handover.
Sir Nigel Irvine spent the night at a CIA safe house in theVirginia countryside, and the next day
Mr. Barrett flew back to London with the air chief marshal.
It was three days later that AzamatKrim sailed from Pier 49 in New York harbor aboard the
elderlyQueen Elizabeth 2 for Southampton. He had decided to sail rather than fly because
he felt
there was a better chance his main luggage would escape X−ray examination if he went by sea.
His purchases were complete. One of his pieces of luggage was a standard aluminum shoulder case
such as professional photographers use to protect their cameras and lenses. As such, it could not be
X−rayed but would have to be hand−examined. The molded plastic sponge inside that held the
cameras and lenses from banging against each other was glued to the bottom of the case, but ended
two niches short of the real bottom. In the cavity were two handguns with ammunition
clips.
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CHAPTER FIVE 85
Another piece of luggage, deep in the heart of a smallcabüi trunk full of clothes, was an aluminum
tube with a screw top, containing what looked like a long, cylindrical camera lens, some four inches
in diameter. He calculated that if it were examined, it would pass in the eyes of all but the most
suspicious of customs officers as the sort of lens that camera freaks use for very long range
photography, and a collection of books of bird photographs and wildlife pictures lying next to the
lens inside the trunk was designed to corroborate
the explanation.
In fact, the lens was an imageintensifier, also called a night−sight, of the kind that may be
commercially bought without a permit in the United States but not in Britain.
It was boiling hot that Sunday, August 8, in Moscow, and those who could not get to the beaches
crowded instead to the numerous swimming pools of the city, especially the new complex built for
the 1980 Olympics. But the British Embassy
staff, along with those of a dozen other legations, were
at the beach on the Moscow River upstream from Uspenskoye Bridge. Adam Munro was among
them.
He tried to appear as carefree as the others, but it was hard. He checked his watch too many times,
and finally got dressed.
Oh, Adam, youre not going back already? Theres ages of daylight left, one of the secretaries
called to him.
He forced a rueful grin.
Duty calls, or rather the plans for the Manchester Chamber
of Commerce visit call, he shouted
back to her.
He walked through the woods to his car, dropped his bathing
things, had a covert look to see if
anyone was interested, and locked the car. There were too many men in sandals, slacks, and open
shirts for one extra to be of notice, and he thanked his stars the KGB never seemed to take their
jackets off. There was no one looking remotely like the Opposition within sight of him. He set off
through the trees to the north.
Valentinawas waiting for him, standing back in the shade of the trees. His stomach was tight,
knotted, for all that he was pleased to see her. She was no expert at spotting a tail and might have
been followed. If she had, his diplomatic cover would save him from worse than expulsion, but the
repercussions
would be enormous. Even that was not his worry; it was what they would do to her if
she were ever caught. Whatever the motives, the term for what she was doing was high treason.
He took her in his arms and kissed her. She kissed him back and trembled in his arms.
Are you frightened? he asked her.
A bit. She nodded. You listened to the tape recording?
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CHAPTER FIVE 86
Yes, I did. Before I handed it over. I suppose I should not have done, but I did.
Then you know about the famine that faces us. Adam, when I was a girl I saw the famine in this
country just after the war. It was bad, but it was caused by the war, by Germans.
We could take it.
Our leaders were on our side, they would make things get better.
Perhaps they can sort things out this time, said Munro lamely.
Valentinashook her head angrily.
Theyre not even trying, she burst out. I sit there listening
to their voices, typingthe transcripts.
They are just bickering,
trying to save their own skins.
And your uncle, Marshal Kerensky? he asked gently.
Hes as bad as the rest. When I married my husband, Uncle Nikolai was at the wedding. I thought
he was so jolly, so kindly. Of course, that was his private life. Now I listen to him in his public life;
hes like all of them, ruthless and cynical.
They just jockey for advantage over each other, for
power, and to hell with the people. I suppose I should be one of them, but I cant be. Not now, not
anymore.
Munro looked across the clearing at the pines but saw olive
trees and heard a boy in uniform
shouting. You dont own me! Strange, he mused, how establishments with all their power
sometimes went too far and lost control of their own servants through sheer excess. Not always, not
often, but sometimes.
I could get you out of here,Valentina, he said. It would mean my leaving the diplomatic corps,
but its been done before.
Sasha is young enough to grow up somewhere else.
No, Adam, no, its tempting but I cant. Whatever the outcome, I am part of Russia, I have to stay.
Perhaps, one day ... I dont know.
They sat in silence for a while, holding hands. She broke the quiet at last.
Did your ... intelligence people pass the tape recording on to London?
I think so. I handed it to the man I believe represents the Secret Service in the embassy. He asked
me if there would be another one.
She nodded at her shoulder bag.
Its just the transcript. I cant get the tape recordings anymore.
Theyre kept in a safe after the
transcriptions, and I dont have the key. The papers in there are of the following Politburo meeting.
How do you get them out,Valentina? he asked.
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CHAPTER FIVE 87
After the meetings, she told him, the tapes and the stenographic
notes are brought under guard
to the Central Committee
building. There is a locked department there where we work, five other
women and I. With one man in charge. When the transcripts are finished, the tapes are locked
away.
Then how did you get the first one?
She shrugged.
The man in charge is new, since last month. The other one, before him, was more lax. There is a
tape studio next door where the tapes are copied once before being locked in the safe. I was alone in
there last month, long enough to steal the second tape and substitute a dummy.
A dummy? exclaimed Munro. Theyll spot the substitution
if ever they play them back.
Its unlikely, she said. The transcripts form the archives once they have been checked against
the tapes for accuracy. I was lucky with that tape; I brought it out in a shopping bag under the
groceries I had bought in the Central Committee commissary.
Arent you searched?
Hardly ever. We are trusted, Adam, the elite of the New Russia.The papers are easier. At work I
wear an old−fashioned
girdle. I copied the last meeting of June on the machine, but ran off one extra
copy, then switched the number
control back by one figure. The extra copy I stuck inside my girdle.
It made no noticeable bulge. Munros stomach turned at the risk she was taking. What do they
talk about in this meeting? he asked, gesturing
toward the shoulder bag.
The consequences, she said. What will happen when the famine breaks. What the people of
Russia will do to them. But Adam ... theres been one since. Early in July. I couldnt copy it; I was
on leave. I couldnt refuse my leave; it would have been too obvious. But when I got back, I met one
of the girls who had transcribed it. She was white−faced and wouldnt describe it.
Can you get it? asked Munro.
I can try. Ill have to wait until the office is empty and use the copying machine. I can reset it
afterward so it will not show it has been used. But not until early next month; I shall not be on the
late shift when I can work alone until then.
We shouldnt meet here again, Munro told her. Patterns are dangerous.
He spent another hour describing the sort of tradecraft she would need to know if they were to go on
meeting. Finally he gave her a pad of closely typed sheets he had tucked in his waistband under his
loose shirt.
Its all in there, my darling. Memorize it and burn it. Flush the ashes down the can.
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CHAPTER FIVE 88
Five minutes later she gave him a wad of flimsy paper sheets covered with neat, typed Cyrillic script
from her bag and slipped away through the forest to her car on a sandy track half a mile away.
Munro retreated into the darkness of the main arch above the churchs recessed side door. He
produced a roll of tape from his pocket, slipped his pants to his knees, and taped the batch of sheets
to his thigh. With the trousers back up again and belted, he could feel the paper snug against his
thigh as he walked, but under the baggy, Russian−made trousers, they did not show.
By midnight, in the silence of his flat, he had read them all a dozen times. The next Wednesday, they
went in the Messenger
s wrist−chained briefcase to London, wax−sealed in a stout envelope and
coded for the SIS liaison man at the Foreign
Office only.
The glass doors leading to the Rose Garden were tightly shut, and only the whir of the air conditioner
broke the silence in the Oval Office of the White House. The balmy days of June were long gone,
and the steamy heat of a Washington August forbade open doors and windows.
Around the building on the Pennsylvania Avenue side, the tourists, damp and hot, admired the
familiar aspect of the White House front entrance, with its pillars, flag, and curved driveway, or
queued for the guided tour of this most holy of American holies. None of them would penetrate to
the tiny West Wing building where President Matthews sat in conclave with his advisers.
In front of his desk wereStanislaw Poklewski and Robert Benson. They had been joined by the
Secretary of State, David Lawrence, a Boston lawyer and pillar of the East Coast establishment.
President Matthews flicked the file in front of him closed. He had long since devoured the first
Politburo transcript, translated into English; what he had just finished reading was his experts
evaluation of it.
Bob, you were remarkably close with your estimate of a shortfall of thirty million tons, he said.
Now it appears they are going to be fifty to fifty−five million tons short this fall. And you have no
doubt this transcript comes right from inside
the Politburo?
Mr. President, weve checked it out every way. The voices are real; the traces of excessive lindane
in the root of the wheat plant are real; the hatchet job inside the Soviet Agriculture
Ministry is real.
We dont believe there is room for any substantive doubt that tape recording was of the Politburo
in
session.
We have to handle this right, mused the President. There must be no way we make a
miscalculation on this one. There has never been an opportunity like it.
Mr. President, said Poklewski, this means the Soviets are not facing severe shortages, as we
supposed when you invoked the Shannon Act last month. They are facing a famine.
Unknowingly he was echoing the words of Petrov in the Kremlin two months earlier in his aside to
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER FIVE 89
Ivanenko, which had not been on the tape. President Matthews nodded slowly.
We cant disagree with that, Stan. The question is, what do we do about it?
Let them have their famine, said Poklewski. This is the biggest mistake they have made since
Stalin refused to believe Western warnings about the Nazi buildup on his frontier in the spring of
1941. This time, the enemy is within. So let them work it out in their own way.
David? asked the President of his Secretary of State.
Lawrence shook his head. The differences of opinion between
the arch−hawk Poklewski and the
cautious Bostonian were legendary.
I disagree, Mr. President, he said at length. Firstly, I dont think we have examined deeply
enough the possible permutations of what might happen if the Soviet Union were plunged into chaos
next spring. As I see it, it is more than simply a question of letting the Soviets stew in their own
juice. There are massive implications on a worldwide basis consequent on such a phenomenon.
Bob? asked President Matthews. His Director of Central Intelligence was lost in thought.
We have the time, Mr. President, he said. They know you invoked the Shannon Act last month.
They know that if they want the grain, they have to come to you. As David says, we really should
examine the perspectives consequent upon a famine across the Soviet Union. We can do that as of
now. Sooner or later, the Kremlin has to make a play. When they do, we have all the cards. We know
how bad their predicament
is; they dont know we know. We have the wheat, we have the Condors,
we have the Nightingale, and we have the time. We hold all the aces this time. No need to decide yet
which way to play them.
Lawrence nodded and regarded Benson with new respect. Poklewski shrugged.
President Matthews made up his mind.
Stan, as of now I want you to put together an ad hoc group within the National Security Council. I
want it small, and absolutely secret. You, Bob, and David here. The Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, the secretaries of Defense, the Treasury, and Agriculture. I want to know what will happen,
worldwide, if the Soviet Union starves. I need to know, and soon.
One of the telephones on his desk rang. It was the direct line to the State Department. President
Matthews looked inquiringly
at David Lawrence.
Are you calling me, David? he asked with a smile.
The Secretary of State rose and took the machine off its hook. He listened for several minutes, then
replaced the receiver.
Mr. President, the pace is speeding up. Two hours ago in Moscow, Foreign Minister Rykov
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER FIVE 90
summoned Ambassador Donaldson to the Foreign Ministry. On behalf of the Soviet government he
has proposed the sale by the United States to the Soviet Union by next spring of fifty−five million
tons of mixed cereal grains.
For several moments only the ormolu carriage clock above the marble fireplace could be heard in the
Oval Office.
What did Ambassador Donaldson reply? asked the President.
Of course, that the request would be passed on to Washington
for consideration, said Lawrence,
and that no doubt your answer would be forthcoming in due course.
Gentlemen, said the President, I need those answers, and I need them fast. I can hold my answer
for four weeks at the outside, but by September fifteenth at the latest I shall have to reply. When I do,
I shall want to know what we are handling here. Every possibility.
Mr. President, within a few days we may be receiving a second package of information from the
Nightingale. That could give an indication of the way the Kremlin sees the same problem.
President Matthews nodded. Bob, if and when it comes, I would like it decoded and on my desk
immediately.
As the presidential meeting broke up in the dusk of Washington,
it was already long after dark in
Britain. Police records later showed that scores of burglaries and break−ins had taken place during
the night of August 11, but down in Somerset the one that most disturbed the police was the theft
from a sporting−gun shop in the pleasant country town of Taunton.
The thieves had evidently visited the shop in the daylight hours during the previous day or so, for the
alarm had been neatly cut by someone who had spotted where the cable ran. With the alarm system
out of commission, the thieves had used powerful bolt cutters on the window grille in the back alley
that ran behind the shop.
The place had not been ransacked, and the usual haul, shotguns for the holding up of banks, had not
been taken. What was missing, the proprietor confirmed, was a single hunting rifle, one of his finest,
a Finnish−made Sako Hornet .22, a highly accurate precision piece. Also gone were two boxes of
shells for the rifle, soft−nosed 45−grain hollow−point Remingtons, capable of high velocity, great
penetration, and considerable distortion on impact.
In his flat in Bayswater, Andrew Drake sat with Miroslav Kaminsky and AzamatKrim and gazed at
their haul laid out on the sitting−room table; it consisted of two handguns, each with two magazines
fully loaded, the rifle with two boxes of shells, and the imageintensifier.
There are two basic types of night−sight, the infrared scope and theintensifier. Men who shoot by
night tend to prefer the latter, andKrim, with his Western Canadian hunting background and three
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER FIVE 91
years with the Canadian paratroopers, had chosen well.
The infrared sight is based on the principle of sending a beam of infrared light down the line of fire
to illuminate the target, which appears in the sight as a greenish outline. But because it emits light,
even a light invisible to the naked eye, the infrared sight requires a power source. The
imageintensifier
works on the principle of gathering all those tiny elements
of light that are present
in a dark environment, and concentrating them, as the gigantic retina of a barn owls eye can
concentrate what little light there is and see a moving mouse where a human eye would detect
nothing. It needs no power source.
Originally developed for military purposes, the small, hand−held image intensifiers had by the late
seventies come to interest the vast American security industry and were of use to factory guards and
others. Soon they were sold commercially.
By the early eighties the larger versions, capable of
being mounted atop a rifle barrel, were also purchasable in America for cash across the counter. It
was one of these that AzamatKrim had bought.
The rifle already had grooves along the upper side of its barrel to take a telescopic sight for target
practice. Working with a file and a vise screwed to the edge of the kitchen table,Krim began to
convert the clips of the imageintensifier to fit into these grooves.
WhileKrim was working, Barry Ferndale paid a visit to the United States Embassy, a mile away in
Grosvenor Square. By prearrangement he was visiting the head of the CIA operation
in London,
who was ostensibly a diplomat attached to his countrys embassy staff.
The meeting was brief and cordial. Ferndale removed from his briefcase a wad of papers and handed
them over.
Fresh from the presses, my dear fellow, he told the American. Rather a lot, Im afraid. These
Russians do tend to talk, dont they? Anyway, best of luck.
The papers were the Nightingales second delivery, and already
in translation into English. The
American knew he would have to encode them himself, and send them himself. No one else would
see them. He thanked Ferndale and settled down to a long night of hard work.
He was not the only man who slept little that night. Far away in the city of Ternopol in the Ukraine, a
plainclothes agent of the KGB left the noncommissioned officers club and commissary
beside the
KGB barracks and began to walk home. He was not of the rank to rate a staff car, and his own
private
vehicle was parked near his house. He did not mind; it was a warm and pleasant night, and
he had had a convivial evening with his colleagues in the club.
Which was probably why he failed to notice the two figures in the doorway across the street who
seemed to be watching the club entrance and who nodded to each other.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER FIVE 92
It was after midnight, and Ternopol, even in a warm August,
has no nightlife to speak of. The secret
policemans path took him away from the main streets and into the sprawl of Shevchenko Park,
where the trees in full leaf almost covered the narrow pathways. It was the longest shortcut he ever
took. Halfway across the park there was a scuttling of feet behind him; he half turned, took the blow
from the blackjack that had been aimed at the back of his head on the temple, and went down in a
heap.
It was nearly dawn before he recovered. He had been dragged into a tangle of bushes and robbed of
his wallet, money, keys, ration card, and I.D. card. Police and KGB inquirescontinued for several
weeks into this most unaccustomed
mugging, but no culprits were discovered. In fact, both
assailants had been on the first dawn train out of Ternopol and were back in their homes in Lvov.
President Matthews chaired the meeting of the ad hoc committee
that considered the Nightingales
second package, and it was a subdued meeting.
My analysts have already come up with some possibilities consequent upon a famine in the Soviet
Union next winter and spring, Benson told the seven men in the Oval Office, but I dont think
any one of them would have dared go as far as the Politburo themselves have done in predicting a
pandemic breakdown of law and order. Its unheard of in the Soviet Union.
Thats true of my people, too, agreed David Lawrence of the State Department. Theyre talking
here about the KGBs not being able to hold the line. I dont think we could have gone that far in
our prognosis.
So what answer do I give Maxim Rudin to his request to purchase fifty−five million tons of grain?
asked the President.
Mr. President, tell him No,  urged Poklewski. We have here an opportunity that has never
occurred before and may never occur again. You have Maxim Rudin and the whole Politburo in the
palm of your hand. For two decades successive administrations have bailed the Soviets out every
time they have gotten into problems with their economy. Every
time, they have come back more
aggressive than ever. Every time they have responded by pushing further with their involvement in
Africa, Asia, Latin America. Every time, the Third World has been encouraged to believe the Soviets
have recovered from their setbacks through their own efforts, that the Marxist economic system
works. This time, the world can be shown beyond a doubt that the Marxist economic system does not
work and never will. This time, I urge you to screw the lid down tight, real tight. You can demand a
concession for every ton of wheat. You can require them to get out of Asia, Africa, and the
Americas. And if Rudin wont, you can bring him down.
Would thisPresident Matthews tapped the Nightingale report in front of himbring Rudin
down?
David Lawrence answered, and no one disagreed with him.
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CHAPTER FIVE 93
If what is described in here by the members of the Politburothemselves actually happened inside
the Soviet Union, yes, Rudin would fall in disgrace, as Khrushchev fell, he said.
Then use the power, urged Poklewski. Use it. Rudin has run out of options. He has no
alternative but to agree to your terms. If he wont, topple him.
And the successor began the President.
Will have seen what happened to Rudin, and will learn his lesson from that. Any successor will
have to agree to the terms we lay down.
President Matthews sought the views of the rest of the meeting. All but Lawrence and Benson agreed
with Poklewski.
President Matthews made his decision; the hawks had won.
The Soviet Foreign Ministry is one of seven near−identical buildings of the wedding−cake
architectural style that Stalin favored:neo−Gothic as put together by a madpâtissier in brown
sandstone, and standing on Smolensky Boulevard, on the corner of Arbat.
On the penultimate day of the month, theFleetwood Brougham Cadillac of the American
Ambassador to Moscow hissed into the parking bay before the main doors, and Myron Donaldson
was escorted to the plush fourth−floor office of Dmitri Rykov, the Soviet Foreign Minister. They
knew each other well; before coming to Moscow, Ambassador Donaldson
had done a spell at the
United Nations, where Dmitri Rykov was a well−known figure. Frequently they had drunk friendly
toasts there together, and here in Moscow also. But todays meeting was formal. Donaldson was
attended by his deputy chief of mission, and Rykov by five senior officials.
Donaldson read his message carefully, word for word, in its original English. Rykov understood and
spoke English well, but an aide did a rapid running translation into his right ear.
President Matthews message made no reference to his knowledge of the disaster that had struck the
Soviet wheat crop, and it expressed no surprise at the Soviet request of earlier
in the month for the
staggering purchase of fifty−five million
tons of grain. In measured terms it expressed regret that
the United States of America would not be in a position to make a sale to the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics of the requested tonnage of wheat.
With hardly a pause, Ambassador Donaldson read on, into the second part of the message. This,
seemingly unconnected with the first, though following without a break, regretted the lack of success
of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks known as SALT III, concluded in the winter of 1980, in
lessening world tension, and expressed the hope that SALT IV, scheduled for preliminary discussion
that coming autumn and winter, would achieve more, and enable the world to make genuine steps
along the road to a just and lasting peace. That was all.
Ambassador Donaldson laid the full text of the message on Rykovs desk, received the formal,
straight−faced thanks of the gray−haired, gray−visaged Soviet Foreign Minister, and left.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER FIVE 94
Andrew Drake spent most of that day poring over books. AzamatKrim, he knew, was somewhere in
the hills of Wales fire−testing the hunting rifle with its new sight mounted above the barrel. Miroslav
Kaminsky was still working at his steadily
improving English. For Drake, the problems centered on
the south Ukrainian port of Odessa.
His first work of reference was the red−coveredLloyds Loading List, a weekly guide to ships
loading in European ports for destinations all over the world. From this he learned that there was no
regular service from Northern Europe to Odessa, but there was a small, independent,
inter−Mediterranean
service that also called at several Black Sea ports. It was named the Salonika
Line, and listed two vessels.
From there he went to the blue−coveredLloyds Shipping Index and scoured the columns until he
came to the vessels in question. He smiled. The supposed owners of each vessel trading in the
Salonika Line were one−ship companies registered
in Panama, which meant beyond much of a
doubt that the owning company in each case was a single brass plate attached to the wall of a
lawyers office in Panama City, and no more.
From his third work of reference, a book called theGreek Shipping Directory, he ascertained that the
managing agents were listed as a Greek firm and that theiroffices were in Piraeus,
the port of
Athens. He knew what that meant. In ninety−nine cases out of a hundred, when one talks to the
managing agents of a Panama−flag ship and they are Greek, one is in effect talking to the ships
owners. They masquerade as agents only in order to take advantage of the fact that agents cannot
be held legally responsible for the peccadilloes of their principals. Some of these peccadilloes
include inferior rates of pay and conditions for the crew, unseaworthy vessels and ill−defined safety
standards but well−defined valuations for total−loss insurance, and occasionally some very
careless habits with crude−oil spillages.
For all that, Drake began to like the Salonika Line for one reason: a Greek−registered vessel would
inevitably be allowed to employ only Greek senior officers, but could employ a cosmopolitan
crew
with or without official seamans books; passports
alone would be sufficient And her ships visited
Odessa regularly.
Maxim Rudin leaned forward, lay the Russian translation of President Matthewss negative message
as delivered by Ambassador
Donaldson on his coffee table, and surveyed his three guests. It was
dark outside, and he liked to keep the lights low in his private study at the north end of the Arsenal
Building in the Kremlin.
Blackmail, said Petrov angrily.
Of course, said Rudin. What were you expecting? Sympathy?

That damned Poklewski is behind this, said Rykov. But this cannot be Matthewss final answer.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER FIVE 95
Their own Condors
and our offer to buy fifty−five million tons of grain must have told them what
position we are in.
Will they talk eventually? Will they negotiate after all? asked Ivanenko.
Oh, yes, theyll talk eventually, said Rykov. But theyll delay as long as they can, spin things
out, wait until the famine
begins to bite, then trade the grain against humiliating concessions.
Not too humiliating, I hope, murmured Ivanenko. We have only a seven−to−six majority in the
Politburo, and I for one would like to hold onto it.
That is precisely my problem, growled Rudin. Sooner or later I have to send Dmitri Rykov into
the negotiating chamber to fight for us, and Idont have a single damned weapon to give him.
On the last day of the month, Andrew Drake flew from London
to Athens to begin his search for a
ship heading toward Odessa.
The same day, a small van, converted into a two−bunk mobile
home such as students like to use for
a roving Continental
holiday, left London for Dover on the Channel coast, and thence to France and
Athens by road. Concealed beneath the floor were the guns, ammunition, and imageintensifier.
Fortunately,
most drug consignments head the other way, from the Balkans toward France and
Britain. Customs checks were perfunctory at Dover and Calais.
At the wheel was AzamatKrim with his Canadian passport and international driving license. Beside
him, with new, albeit not quite regular, British papers, was Miroslav Kaminsky.

Chapter Six


CLOSE BY THE BRIDGE across the Moscow River at Uspenskoye is a restaurant called the
RussianIsba. It is built in the style of the timber cottages in which Russian peasants dwell, and which
are calledisbas. Both interior and exterior are of split nine tree trunks, nailed to timber uprights. The
gap between is traditionally filled with river clay, in a fashion not unlike the manner in which North
American log cabins are insulated.
Theseisbas may look primitive, and from the point of view of sanitation often are, but they are much
warmer than brick or concrete structures through the freezing Russian winters. TheIsba restaurant is
snug and warm inside, divided into a dozen small private dining rooms, many of which will seat only
one dinner party. Unlike the restaurants of central Moscow,
it is permitted a profit incentive linked
to staff pay, and as a result, and in even more stark contrast to the usual run of Russian eateries, it
has tasty food and fast and willing service.
It was here that Adam Munro had set up his next meeting withValentina, scheduled for Saturday,
September 4. She had secured a dinner date with a male friend and had persuaded
him to take her to
this particular restaurant. Munro had invited one of the embassy secretaries to dinner, and had
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SIX 96
booked the table in her name, not in his own. The written reservations record would not, therefore,
show that either Munro orValentina had been present that evening.
They dined in separate rooms, and on the dot of nine oclock each made the excuse of going to the
toilet and left the table. They met in the parking lot, and Munro, whose own car would have been too
noticeable with its embassy plates, followedValentina to her own private Zhiguli sedan. She was
subdued and puffed nervously at a cigarette.
Munro had handled two Russian defectors−in−place and knew the incessantstrahl that begins to wear
at the nerves after
a few weeks of subterfuge and secrecy.
I got my chance, she said at length. Three days ago. The meeting of early July. I was nearly
caught.
Munro was tense. Whatever she might think about her being trusted within the Party machine, no
one, no one at all, is ever really trusted in Moscow politics. She was walking a high wire; they both
were. The difference was, he had a net: his diplomatic status.
What happened? he asked.
Someone came in. A guard. I had just switched off the copying machine and was back at my
typewriter. He was perfectly
friendly. But he leaned against the machine. It was still warm. I dont
think he noticed anything. But it frightened me. Thats not all that frightened me. I couldnt read
the transcript until I got home. I was too busy feeding it into the copier. Adam, its awful.
She took her car keys, unlocked the glove compartment, and extracted a fat envelope, which she
handed to Munro. The moment of handover is usually the moment when the watchers pounce, if they
are there; the moment when the feet pound on the gravel, the doors are torn open, the occupants
dragged out. Nothing happened.
Munro glanced at his watch. Nearly ten minutes. Too long. He put the envelope in his inside breast
pocket.
Im going to try for permission to bring you out, he said. You cant go on like this forever,
even for much longer. Nor can you simply settle back to the old life, not now. Not knowing what you
know. Nor can I carry on, knowing you are out in the city, knowing that we love each other. I have a
leave break next month. Im going to ask them in London then.
This time she made no demur, a sign that her nerve was showing the first signs of breaking.
All right, she said. Seconds later, she was gone into the darkness of the parking lot. He watched
her enter the pool of light by the open restaurant door and disappear inside. He gave her two minutes,
then returned to his own impatient companion.
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CHAPTER SIX 97
It was three in the morning before Munro had finished reading
Plan Aleksandr, Marshal Nikolai
Kerenskys scenario for the conquest of Western Europe. He poured himself a double brandy and
sat staring at the papers on his sitting−room table. Valentinas jolly, kindly Uncle Nikolai, he
mused, had certainly
laid it on the line. He spent two hours staring at a map of Europe, and by
sunrise was as certain as Kerensky himself that in terms of conventional warfare the plan would
work. Secondly, he was sure that Rykov, too, was right: thermonuclear
war would ensue. And
thirdly, he was convinced there was no way of convincing the dissident members of the Politburo
of
this, short of the holocausts actually happening.
He rose and went to the window. Daylight was breaking in the east, out over the Kremlin spires; an
ordinary Sunday was beginning for the citizens of Moscow, as it would in two hours for the
Londoners and five hours later for the New Yorkers.
All his adult life the guarantee that summer Sundays would remain just plain ordinary had been
dependent on a fine balancea balance of belief in the might and willpower of the opponent
superpower, a balance of credibility, a balance
of fear, but a balance for all that. He shivered, partly
from the chill of morning, more from the realization that the papers behind him proved that at last the
old nightmare was coming out of the shadows; the balance was breaking down.
The Sunday sunrise found Andrew Drake in far better humor,
for his Saturday night had brought
information of a different
kind.
Every area of human knowledge, however small, however arcane, has its experts and its devotees.
And every group of these appear to have one place where they congregate to talk, discuss, exchange
their information, and impart the newest gossip.
Shipping movements in the eastern Mediterranean hardly form a subject on which doctorates are
earned, but they do form a subject of great interest to out−of−work seamen in that area, such as
Andrew Drake was pretending to be. The information
center about such movements is a small hotel
called theCavo dOro, standing above a yacht basin in the port of Piraeus.
Drake had already observed the offices of the agents, and probable owners, of the Salonika Line, but
he knew the last thing he should do was to visit them.
Instead, he checked into theCavo dOro Hotel and spent his time at the bar, where captains, mates,
bosuns, agents, dockland gossips, and job seekers sat over drinks to exchange what tidbits of
information they had. On Saturday night Drake found his man, a bosun who had once worked for the
Salonika Line. It took half a bottle of retsina to extract the information.
The one that visits Odessa most frequently is the M/VSanadria, he was told. She is an old tub.
Captain is Nikos Thanos. I think shes in harbor now.
Shewas in harbor, and Drake found her by midmorning. She was a five−thousand−ton−deadweight,
tween−deck Mediterranean
trader, rusty and none too clean, but if she was heading
into the Black
TheDevil'sAlternative
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Sea and up to Odessa on her next voyage, Drake would not have minded if she had been full of
holes.
By sundown he had found her captain, having learned that Thanos and all his officers were from the
Greek island of Chios. Most of these Greek−run traders are almost family affairs,
the master and his
senior officers usually being from the same island, and often interrelated. Drake spoke no Greek, but
fortunately English was the lingua franca of the international
maritime community, even in Piraeus,
and just before sundown he found Captain Thanos.
Northern Europeans, when they finish work, head for home, wife, and family. Eastern
Mediterraneans head for the coffeehouse, friends, and gossip. The mecca of the coffeehouse
community in Piraeus is a street alongside the waterfront
called Akti Miaouli; its vicinity contains
little else but shipping offices and coffeehouses.
Each frequenter has his favorite, and they are always crammed. Captain Thanos hung out when he
was ashore at an open−fronted affair called Mikis, and there Drake found him, sitting over the
inevitable thick black coffee, tumbler of cold water, and shot glass of ouzo. He was short, broad, and
nut−brown, with black curly hair and several days of stubble.
Captain Thanos? asked Drake. The man looked up in suspicion at the Englishman and nodded.
NíkosThanos, of theSanadria? The seaman nodded again. His three companions had fallen silent,
watching. Drake smiled.
My name is Andrew Drake. Can I offer you a drink? Captain Thanos used one forefinger to
indicate his own glass and those of his companions. Drake, still standing, summoned
a waiter and
ordered five of everything. Thanos nodded to a vacant chair, the invitation to join them. Drake knew
it would be slow, and might take days. But he was not going to hurry. He had found his ship.
The meeting in the Oval Office five days later was far less relaxed. All eight members of the ad hoc
committee of the National Security Council were present, with President Matthews
in the chair. All
had spent half the night reading the transcript of the Politburo meeting in which Marshal Kerensky
had laid out his plan for war and Vishnayev had made his bid for power. All eight men were shaken.
The focus was on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Craig.
The question is, General, President Matthews asked, is it feasible?
In terms of a conventional war across the face of Western Europe from the Iron Curtain to the
Channel ports, even involving
the use of tactical nuclear shells and rockets, yes, Mr. President, its
feasible.
Could the West, before next spring, increase her defenses to the point of making it completely
unworkable?
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CHAPTER SIX 99
Thats a harder one, Mr. President. Certainly we in the United States could ship more men, more
hardware, over to Europe. That would give the Soviets ample excuse to beef up their own levels, if
they ever needed such an excuse. But as to our European allies, they dont have the reserves we
have; for over a decade they have run down their manpower levels, arms levels, and preparation
levels to a point where the imbalance
in conventional manpower and hardware between the NATO
forces and the Warsaw Pact forces is at a stage that cannot be recouped in a mere nine months. The
training that the personnel would need, even if recruited now, the production
of new weapons of the
necessary sophisticationthese cannot be achieved in nine months.
So theyre back to 1939 again, said the Secretary of the Treasury gloomily.
What about the nuclear option? asked Bill Matthews quietly.
General Craig shrugged.
If the Soviets attack in full force, its inescapable. Forewarned
may be forearmed, but nowadays
armament programs
and training programs take too long. Forewarned as we are, we could slow up a
Soviet advance westward, spoil Kerenskys time scale of a hundred hours. But whether we could
stop him deadthe whole damn Soviet Army, Navy, and Air Forcethats another matter. By the
time we knew the answer, it would probably be too late, anyway. Which makes our use of the
nuclear option inescapable. Unless, of course, sir, we abandon Europe and our three hundred
thousand
men there.
David? asked the President.
Secretary of State David Lawrence tapped the file in front of him.
For about the first time in my life, I agree with Dmitri Rykov. Its not just a question of Western
Europe. If Europe goes, the Balkans, the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey, Iran, and the Arabian states
cannot hold. Ten years ago, five percent
of our oil was imported; five years ago, the total had risen
to fifty percent. Now its running at sixty−two percent, and rising. Even the whole of the Western
Hemisphere cannot
fulfill more than fifty−five percent of our needs at maximum
production. We
need the Arabian oil. Without it we are as finished as Europe, without a shot fired.
Suggestions, gentlemen? asked the President.
The Nightingale is valuable, but not indispensable, not now, saidStanislaw Poklewski. Why not
meet with Rudin and lay it on the table? We now know about Plan Aleksandr; we know the intent.
And we will take steps to head off that intent to make it unworkable. When he informs his Politburo
of that, theyll realize the element of surprise is lost, that the war option wont work anymore. Itll
be the end of the Nightingale,
but it will also be the end of Plan Aleksandr.
Bob Benson of the CIA shook his head vigorously.
I dont think its that simple, Mr. President. As I read it, its not a question of convincing Rudin
or Rykov. Theres a vicious faction fight now going on inside the Politburo, as we know. At stake is
the succession to Rudin. And the famine is hanging over them.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SIX 100
Vishnayev and Kerensky have proposed− a limited war as a means both of obtaining the food
surpluses of Western Europe
and of imposing war discipline on the Soviet peoples. Revealing what
we know to Rudin would change nothing. It might even cause him to fall. Vishnayev and his group
would take over; they are completely ignorant of the West and the way we Americans react to being
attacked. Even with the element
of surprise gone, with the grain famine pending they could still try
the war option.
I agree with Bob, said David Lawrence. There is a parallel
here with the Japanese position forty
years ago. The oil embargo caused the fall of the moderate Konoye faction. Instead,
we got
GeneralTojo, and that led to Pearl Harbor. If Maxim Rudin is toppled now, we could get Yefrem
Vishnayev in his place. And on the basis of these papers, that could lead to war.
Then Maxim Rudin must not fall, said President Matthews.
Mr. President, I protest, said Poklewski heatedly. Am I to understand that the efforts of the
United States are now to be bent toward saving the skin of Maxim Rudin? Have any of us forgotten
what he did, the people liquidated under his regime, for him to get to the pinnacle of power in Soviet
Russia?
Stan, Im sorry, said President Matthews with finality. Last month I authorized a refusal by the
United States to supply the Soviet Union with the grain it needs to head off a famine. At least until I
knew what the perspectives of that famine would be. I can no longer pursue that policy of rejection,
because I think we now know what those perspectives entail.
Gentlemen, I am going this night to draft a personal letter to President Rudin, proposing that David
Lawrence and Dmitri
Rykov meet on neutral territory to confer together. And that they confer on
the subject of the new SALT Four arms−limitation treaty andany other matters of interest.
When Andrew Drake returned to theCavo dOro after his second meeting with Captain Thanos,
there was a message waiting for him. It was from AzamatKrim, to say he and Kaminsky had just
checked into their agreed hotel.
An hour later Drake was with them. The van had come through unscathed. During the night, Drake
had the guns and ammunition transferred piece by piece to his own room at theCavo dOro in
separate visits from Kaminsky andKrim. When all was safely locked away, he took them both out to
dinner. The following morning,Krim flew back to London, to live in Drakes apartment and await
his phone call. Kaminsky stayed on in a small pension in the back streets of Piraeus.
It was not
comfortable, but it was anonymous.
While they were dining, the U.S. Secretary of State was locked in private conference with the Irish
Ambassador to Washington.
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CHAPTER SIX 101
If my meeting with Foreign Minister Rykov is to succeed, said David Lawrence, we must have
privacy. The discretion must be absolute. Reykjavik in Iceland is too obvious;
our base at Keflavik
there is like U.S. territory. The meeting has to be on neutral territory. Geneva is full of watching
eyes; dittoStockholm and Vienna. Helsinki, like Iceland, would be too obvious. Ireland is halfway
between Moscow and Washington, and you still foster the cult of privacy
there.
That night, coded messages passed between Washington and Dublin. Within twenty−four hours, the
government in Dublin had agreed to host the meeting and proposed flight plans for both parties.
Within hours, President Matthewss personal and private letter to President Maxim Rudin was on its
way to Ambassador Donaldson in Moscow.
Andrew Drake at his third attempt secured a person−to−person
conversation with Captain Nikos
Thanos. There was by then little doubt in the old Greeks mind that the young Englishman
wanted
something from him, but he gave no hint of curiosity. As usual, Drake bought the coffee and ouzo.
Captain, said Drake, I have a problem, and I think you may be able to help me.
Thanos raised an eyebrow but studied his coffee.
Sometime near the end of the month theSanadria will sail from Piraeus for Istanbul and the Black
Sea. I believe you will be calling at Odessa.
Thanos nodded. We are due to sail on the thirtieth, he said, and yes, we will be discharging
cargo at Odessa.
I want to go to Odessa, said Drake. I must reach Odessa.
You are an Englishman, said Thanos. There are package
tours of Odessa. You could fly there.
There are cruises by Soviet liners out of Odessa. You could join one.
Drake shook his head.
Its not as easy as that, he said. Captain Thanos, I would not receive a visa for Odessa. My
application would be dealt with in Moscow, and I would not be allowed in.
And why do you want to go? asked Thanos with suspicion.
I have a girl in Odessa, said Drake. Myfiancée. I want to get her out.
Captain Thanos shook his head with finality. He and his ancestors from Chios had been smuggling in
the eastern Mediterranean
since Homer was learning to talk, and he knew that a brisk contraband
trade went into and out of Odessa, and that his own crew made a tidy living on the side from
bringing such luxury items as nylons, perfume, and leather coats to the black market of the Ukrainian
port. But smuggling
people was quite different, and he had no intention of getting involved in that.
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CHAPTER SIX 102
I dont think you understand, said Drake. Theres no question of bringing her out on
theSanadria. Let me explain.

He produced a photograph of himself and a remarkably pretty girl sitting on the balustrade of the
Potemkin Stairway, which links the city with the port. Thanoss interest revived at once, for the girl
was definitely worth looking at.
I am a graduate in Russian studies of the University of Bradford, said Drake. Last year I was an
exchange student for six months, and spent those six months at Odessa University.
That was where I
metLarissa. We fell in love. We wanted to get married.
Like most Greeks, Nikos Thanos prided himself on his romantic
nature. Drake was talking his
language.
Why didnt you? he asked.
The Soviet authorities would not let us, said Drake. Of course, I wanted to bringLarissa back to
England and marry her and settle down. She applied for permission to leave and was turned down. I
kept reapplying on her behalf from the London end. No luck. Then, last July, I did as you just
suggested;
I went on a package tour to the Ukraine, through Kiev, Ternopol, and Lvov.
He flicked open his passport and showed Thanos the date stamps at the Kiev airport.
She came up to Kiev to see me. We made love. Now she has written to me to say she is having our
baby. So now I have to marry her more than ever.
Captain Thanos also knew the rules. They had applied to his society since time began. He looked
again at the photograph.
He was not to know that the girl was a London lady who had posed in a
studio not far from Kings Cross station, nor that the background of the Potemkin Stairway was an
enlarged
detail from a tourist poster obtained at the London office
of Intourist.
So how are you going to get her out? he asked.
Next month, said Drake, there is a Soviet liner, theLitva, leaving Odessa with a large party from
the Soviet youth movement, the Komsomol, for an off−season educational
tour of the
Mediterranean.
Thanos nodded; he knew theLitva well.
Because I made too many scenes over the matter ofLarissa,
the authorities will not let me back
in.Larissa would not normally be allowed to go on this tour. But there is an official in the local
branch of the Interior Ministry who likes to live well above his income. He will get her onto that
cruise with all her papers in order, and when the ship docks at Venice, I will be waiting for her. But
the official wants ten thousand American dollars. I have them, but I have to get the package to her.
It made perfect sense to Captain Thanos. He knew the level of bureaucratic corruption that was
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SIX 103
endemic to the southern shore of the Ukraine, Crimea, and GeorgiaCommunism
or no
Communism. That an official should arrange a few documents for enough Western currency to
improve his life−style substantially was quite normal.
An hour later the deal was concluded. For a further five thousand dollars Thanos would take Drake
on as a temporary deckhand for the duration of the voyage.
We sail on the thirtieth, he said, and we should be in Odessa on the tenth or eleventh. Be at the
quay where theSanadria is berthed by sixP.M. on the thirtieth. Wait until the agents water clerk has
left, then come aboard just before the immigration people.
Four hours later in Drakes flat in London, AzamatKrim took Drakes call from Piraeus giving bun
the date that Mishkin and Lazareff needed to know.
It was on the twentieth that President Matthews received Maxim Rudins reply. It was a personal
letter, as his had been to the Soviet leader. In it Rudin agreed to the secret meeting between David
Lawrence and Dmitri Rykov in Ireland,
scheduled for the twenty−fourth.
President Matthews pushed the letter across his desk to Lawrence.
Hes not wasting time, he remarked.
He has no time to waste, returned the Secretary of State. Everything is being prepared. I have
two men in Dublin now, checking out the arrangements. Our Ambassador to Dublin
will be meeting
the Soviet Ambassador tomorrow, as a result of this letter, to finalize details.
Well, David, you know what to do, said the President.
Azamat Krims problem was to be able to post a letter or card to Mishkin from inside the Soviet
Union, complete with Russian stamps and written in Russian, without going through the necessary
delay in waiting for a visa to be granted to him by the Soviet Consulate in London, which could take
up to four weeks. With the help of Drake, he had solved it relatively simply.
Prior to 1980, the main airport of Moscow, Sheremetyevo, had been a small, drab, and shabby affair.
But for the Olympics
the Soviet government had commissioned a grand new airport terminal there,
and Drake had done some research on it.
The facilities in the new terminal, which handled all long−
distance flights out of Moscow, were
excellent. There were numerous plaques praising the achievements of Soviet technology
all over the
airport; conspicuous by its absence was any mention that Moscow had had to commission a West
German firm to build the place because no Soviet construction
company could have achieved the
standard or the completion
date. The West Germans had been handsomely paid in hard currency,
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SIX 104
but their contract had had rigorous penalty clauses in the case of noncompletion by the start of the
1980 Olympics. For this reason, the Germans had used only two local Russian ingredientssand and
water. Everything else had been trucked in from West Germany in order to be certain
of delivery on
time.
In the great transit lounge and departure lounges, they had built letter boxes to handle the mail of
anyone forgetting to post his last picture postcards from inside Moscow before leaving. The KGB
monitors every single letter, postcard, cable, or phone call coming into or leaving the Soviet Union.
Massive though the task may be, it gets done. But the new departure lounges at Sheremetyevo were
used both for international
flights and for long−distance internal Soviet Union flights.
Krims postcard, therefore, had been acquired at the Aeroflot
offices in London. Modern Soviet
stamps sufficient for a postcard at the internal rate had been openly bought from the London stamp
emporium Stanley Gibbons. On the card, which showed a picture of the Tupolev−144 supersonic
passenger
jet, was written in Russianthe message: Just leaving with our factorys Party group for
the expedition to Khabarovsk.
Great excitement. Almost forgot to write you. Many happy returns
for your birthday on the eleventh. Your cousin, Ivan.
Khabarovsk being in the extreme southeast of Siberia, close to the Sea of Japan, a group leaving by
Aeroflot for that city would leave from the same terminal building as a flight leaving
for Japan. The
card was addressed to David Mishkin at his address in Lvov.
AzamatKrim took the Aeroflot flight from London to Moscow
and changed planes there for the
Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Narita Airport, Tokyo. He had an open−dated return.
He also had a
two−hour wait in the transit lounge in Moscow. Here he dropped the card in the letter box and went
on to Tokyo. Once there, he changed to Japan Air Lines and flew back to London.
The card was examined by the KGB postal detail at Moscow
s airport, assumed to be from a
Russian to a Ukrainian cousin, both living and working inside the USSR, and sent on. It arrived in
Lvov three days later.
While the tired and very jet−lagged Crimean Tatar was flying back from Japan, a small jet of the
Norwegian internal airline
Braethens−Safe banked high over the fishing town of Ålesund and began
to let down to the municipal airport on the flat island across the bay. From one of its passenger
windowsThor
Larsen looked down with the thrill of excitement that he felt whenever he returned to
the small community that had raised him and that would always be home.
He had arrived in the world in 1935, in a fishermans cottage
in the old Buholmen quarter, long
since demolished to make way for the new highway. Buholmen before the war had been the fishing
quarter, a maze of wooden cottages in gray, blue, and ocher. From his fathers cottage a yard had
run down, like all the others along the row, from the back stoop to the sound. Here were the rickety
wooden jetties where the independent fishermen like his father had tied their small vessels when they
came home from the sea; here the smells of his childhood had been of pitch, resin, paint, salt, and
fish.
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CHAPTER SIX 105
As a child he had sat on his fathers jetty, watching the big ships moving slowly up to berth at the
Storneskaia, and he had dreamed of the places they must visit, far away across the western ocean. By
the age of seven he could manage his own small skiff several hundred yards off the Buholmen shore
to where old Sula Mountain cast her shadow from across the fjord on the shining water.
Hell be a seaman, said his father, watching with satisfaction
from his jetty. Not a fisherman,
staying close to these waters, but a seaman.
He was five when the Germans came toÅlesund, big, gray−coated men who tramped around in
heavy boots. It was not until he was seven that he saw the war. It was summer, and his father had let
him come fishing during the holidays from Norvoy School. With the rest of the Ålesund fishing
fleet, his fathers boat was far out at sea under the guard of a German uboat. During the night he
awoke because men were moving about. Away to the west were twinkling lights, the mastheads of
the Orkneys fleet.
There was a small rowboat bobbing beside his fathers vessel, and the crew were shifting herring
boxes. Before the childs astounded gaze, a young man, pale and exhausted, emerged from beneath
the boxes in the hold and was helped into the rowboat. Minutes later it was lost in the darkness,
heading for the Orkneys men. Another radio operator from the Resistance was on his way to England
for training. His father made him promise never to mention what he had seen. A week later in
Ålesund there was a rattle of rifle fire one evening, and his mother told him he should say his prayers
extra hard because the schoolmaster was dead.
By the time he was in his early teens, growing out of clothes faster than his mother could make them,
he, too, had become obsessed with radio and in two years had built his own transmitter−receiver. His
father gazed at the apparatus in wonderment; it was beyond his comprehension.Thor was sixteen
when, the day after Christmas of 1951, he picked up an SOS message from a ship in distress in the
mid−Atlantic. She was theFlying Enterprise. Her cargo had shifted, and she was listing badly in
heavy seas.
For sixteen days the world and a teenage Norwegian boy watched and listened with baited breath as
the Danish−born American captain, Kurt Carlsen, refused to leave his sinking ship and nursed her
painfully eastward through the gales toward the south of England. Sitting in his attic hour after hour
with his headphones over his ears, looking out through the dormer window at the wild ocean beyond
the mouth of the fjord,Thor Larsen had willed the old freighter to make it home to port. On January
10, 1952, she finally sank, just fifty−seven miles off Falmouth harbor.
Larsen heard her go down, listened to the shadowing tugs tell of her death and of the rescue of her
indomitable captain.
He took off his headphones, laid them down, and descended
to his parents,
who were at the table.
I have decided, he told them, what I am going to be. I am going to be a sea captain.
A month later he entered the merchant marine.
The plane touched down and rolled to a stop outside the small, neat terminal with its goose pond by
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SIX 106
the parking lot. His wife, Lisa, was waiting for him with the car; with her wereKristina, his
sixteen−year−old daughter, and Kurt, his fourteen−year−old son. The pair chattered like magpies on
the short drive across the island to the ferry, and across the sound to Ålesund, and all the way home
to their comfortable ranch−style house in the secluded suburb of Bogneset.
It was good to be home. He would go fishing with Kurt out on the Borgund Fjord, as his father had
taken him fishing there in his youth; they would picnic in the last days of the summer on their little
cabin cruiser or on the knobby green islands that dotted the sound. He had three weeks of leave; then
Japan, and in February the captaincy of the biggest ship the world had ever seen. He had come a long
way from the wooden cottage in Buholmen, but Ålesund was still his home and for this descendant
of Vikings there was nowhere in the world quite like it.
On the night of September 23, a Grumman Gulf stream in the livery of a well−known commercial
corporation lifted off from Andrews Air Force Base and, carrying long−distance tanks, headed east
across the Atlantic for the Irish airport of Shannon.
It was phased into the Irish air−traffic−control
network as a private charter flight. When it landed at Shannon it was shepherded in darkness to the
side of the airfield away from the international terminal and surrounded by five black and curtained
limousines.
Secretary of State David Lawrence and his party of six were greeted by the U.S.Ambassador and the
deputy chief of mission, and all five limousines swept out of the airport perimeter
fence by a side
gate. They headed northeast through the sleeping countryside toward County Meath.
That same night a Tupolev−134 twin−jet of Aeroflot refueled
at East BerlinsSchönefeld Airport
and headed west over Germany and the Low Countries toward Britain and Ireland. It was slated as a
special Aeroflot flight bringing a trade delegation
to Dublin. As such, the British air−traffic
controllers passed it over to their Irish colleagues as it left the coast of Wales. The Irish had their
military air−traffic network take it over, and it landed two hours before dawn at the Irish Air Corps
base at Baldonnel, outside Dublin.
Here the Tupolev was parked between two hangars out of sight of the main airfield buildings, and it
was greeted by the Soviet Ambassador, the Irish Deputy Foreign Minister, and six limousines.
Foreign Minister Rykov and his party entered the vehicles, were screened by the interior curtains,
and left the air base.
High above the banks of the River Boyne, in an environment
of great natural beauty and not far
from the market town of Slane in County Meath, stands Slane Castle, ancestral
home of the family
Conyngham, earls of Mount Charles. The youthful earl had been quietly asked by the Irish
government
to accept a weeks holiday in a luxury hotel in the west with his pretty countess, and to
lend the castle to the government
for a few days. He had agreed. The restaurant attached
to the
castle was marked as closed for repairs, the staff were given a weeks leave, fresh government
caterers moved in, and Irish police in plain clothes discreetly posted themselves at all points of the
compass around the castle. When the two cavalcades of limousines had entered the grounds, the
main gates were shut. If the local people noticed anything, they were courteous enough to make no
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SIX 107
mention of it.
In the Georgian private dining room before the marble fireplace by Adam, the two statesmen met for
a sustaining breakfast.
Dmitri, good to see you again, said David Lawrence, extending
his hand.
Rykov shook it warmly. He glanced around him at the silver
gifts from George IV, and the
Conyngham portraits on the walls.
So this is how you decadent bourgeois capitalists live, he said.
Lawrence roared with laughter. I wish it were, Dmitri, I wish it were.
At eleven oclock, surrounded by their aides in Johnstons magnificent Gothic circular library, the
two men settled down to negotiate. The bantering was over.
Mr. Foreign Minister, said Lawrence, it seems we both have problems. Ours concern the
continuing arms race between
our two nations, which nothing seems able to halt or even slow down,
and which worries us deeply. Yours seems to concern the forthcoming grain harvest in the Soviet
Union. I hope we can find a means between us to lessen these, our mutual problems.
I hope so, too, Mr. Secretary of State, said Rykov cautiously.
What have you in mind?
There is only one direct flight a week between Athens and Istanbul, the Tuesday Sabena connection,
leaving Athenss Ellinikon Airport at 1400 hours and landing at Istanbul at 1645. On Tuesday,
September 28, Miroslav Kaminsky was on it, instructed to secure for Andrew Drake a consignment
of sheepskin and suede coats and jackets for trading in Odessa.
That same afternoon, Secretary of State Lawrence finished reporting
to the ad hoc committee of the
National Security Council in the Oval Office.
Mr. President, gentlemen, I think we have it. Providing Maxim Rudin can keep his hold on the
Politburo and secure their agreement.
The proposal is that we and the Soviets each send two teams of negotiators to a resumed
arms−limitation conference. The suggested venue is Ireland again. The Irish government has agreed
and will prepare a suitable conference hall and living accommodations, providing we and the Soviets
signal our assent.
One team from each side will face the other across the table to discuss a broad range of arms
limitations. This is the big one: I secured a concession from Dmitri Rykov that the ambit of the
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SIX 108
discussion need not exclude thermonuclear weapons, strategic weapons, inner space, international
inspection,
tactical nuclear weapons, conventional weapons and manpower levels, or disengagement
of forces along the Iron Curtain line.
There was a murmur of approval and surprise from the other seven men present. No previous
American−Soviet arms conference had ever had such widely drawn terms of reference.
If all areas
showed a move toward genuine and monitoreddétente,
it would add up to a peace treaty.
These talks will be what the conference is supposedly about, so far as the world is concerned, and
the usual press bulletins will be necessary, resumed Secretary of State Lawrence. Now, in back of
the main conference, the secondary
conference of technical experts will negotiate the sale by the
U.S. to the Soviets at financial costs still to be worked out, but probably lower than world prices, of
up to fifty−five million tons of grain, consumer−product technology, computers,
and oil−extraction
technology.
At every stage there will be liaison between the up−front and the in−back teams of negotiators on
each side. They make a concession on arms; we make a concession on low−cost goodies.
When is this slated for? asked Poklewski.
Thats the surprise element, said Lawrence. Normally the Russians like to work very slowly.
Now it seems they are in a hurry. They want to start in two weeks.
Good God, we cant be ready for go in two weeks! exclaimed
the Secretary of Defense,
whose department was intimately
involved.
We have to be, said President Matthews. There will never be another chance like this again.
Besides, we have our SALT team ready and briefed. They have been ready for months. We have to
bring in Agriculture, Trade, and Technology
on this, and fast. We have to get together the team who
can talk on the otherthe trade and technologyside of the deal. Gentlemen, please see to it. At
once.
Maxim Rudin did not put it to his Politburo quite like that, two days later.
They have taken the bait, he said from his chair at the head of the table. When they make a
concession on wheat or technology in one of the conference rooms, we make the absolute minimum
concession in the other conference room. We will get our grain, Comrades; we will feed our people,
we will head off the famine, and at the minimum price. Americans,
after all, have never been able to
outnegotiate Russians.
There was a general buzz of agreement.
What concessions? snapped Vishnayev. How far back will these concessions set the Soviet
Union and the triumph of world Marxism−Leninism?
As to your first question, replied Rykov, we cannot know until we are negotiating. As to your
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SIX 109
second, the answer must be substantially less than a famine would set us back.
There are two points we should be clear on before we decide
whether to talk or not, said Rudin.
One is that the Politburo
will be kept fully informed at every stage, so if the moment comes when
the price is too high, this council will have the right to abort the conference and I will defer to
Comrade Vishnayev and his plan for a war in the spring. The second is that no concession we may
make to secure the wheat need necessarily obtain for very long after the deliveries
have taken
place.
There were several grins around the table. This was the sort of realpolitik the Politburo was much
more accustomed to, as they had shown in transforming the old Helsinki Agreement
ondétente into
a farce.
Very well, said Vishnayev, but I think we should lay down the exact parameters of our
negotiating teams authority
to concede points.
I have no objection to that, said Rudin.
The meeting continued on this theme for an hour and a half. Rudin got his vote to proceed, by the
same margin as before, seven against six.
On the last day of the month, Andrew Drake stood in the shade of a crane and watched theSanadria
battening down her hatches. Conspicuous on deck she had Vac−U−Vators for Odessa, powerful
suction machines, like vacuum cleaners, for sucking wheat out of the hold of a ship and straight into
a grain elevator. The Soviet Union must be trying to improve her grain−unloading capacity, he
mused, though he did not know why. Below the weather deck were forklift trucks for Istanbul and
agricultural machinery for Varna in Bulgaria, part of a transshipment cargo that had come in from
America
as far as Piraeus.
He watched the agents water clerk leave the ship, giving Captain Thanos a last shake of the hand.
Thanos scanned the pier and made out the figure of Drake loping toward him, his kit bag over one
shoulder and his suitcasein the other hand.
In the captains day cabin, Drake handed over his passport and vaccination certificates. He signed
the ships articles and became a member of the deck crew. While he was down below
stowing his
gear, Captain Thanos entered his name in the ships crew list just before the Greek immigration
officer came on board. The two men had the usual drink together.
Theres an extra crewman, said Thanos, as if in passing. The immigration officer scanned the list
and the pile of seamans books and passports in front of him. Most were Greek, but there were six
others, non−Greek. Drakes British passport stood out The immigration officer selected it and riffled
through the pages. A fifty−dollar bill fell out.
An out−of−work, said Thanos, trying to get to Turkey and head for the East. Thought youd be
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CHAPTER SIX 110
glad to be rid of him.
Five minutes later the crews identity documents had been returned to their wooden tray and the
vessels papers stamped for outward clearance. Daylight was fading as her ropes were cast off,
andSanadria slipped away from her berth and headed south before turning northeast for the
Dardanelles.
Below decks, the crew were grouping around the greasy messroom table. One of them was hoping
no one would look under his mattress, where the Sako Hornet rifle was stored. In Moscow his target
was sitting down to an excellent supper.

Chapter Seven


WHILE HIGH−RANKING and secret men launched themselves
into a flurry of activity in
Washington and Moscow, the oldSanadria thumped her way impassively northeast toward the
Dardanelles and Istanbul.
On the second day, Drake watched the bare brown hills of Gallipoli slide by, and the sea dividing
European and Asian Turkey widen into the Sea of Marmara. Captain Thanos, who knew these waters
like his own backyard on Chios, was doing his own pilotage.
Two Soviet cruisers steamed past them, heading fromSebastopol
out to the Mediterranean to
shadow the U.S. Sixth Fleet maneuvers. Just after sundown the twinkling lights of Istanbul and the
Galata Bridge spanning the Bosporus came into view. TheSanadria anchored for the night and
entered port at Istanbul the following morning.
While the forklift trucks were being unloaded, Andrew Drake secured his passport from Captain
Thanos and slipped ashore. He met Miroslav Kaminsky at an agreed rendezvous in central Istanbul
and took delivery of a large bundle of sheepskin and suede coats and jackets. When he returned to
the ship, Captain Thanos raised an eyebrow.
You aiming to keep your girl friend warm? he asked.
Drake shook his head and smiled.
The crew tell me half the seamen bring these ashore in Odessa, he said. I thought it would be the
best way to bring my own package.
The Greek captain was not surprised. He knew half a dozen of his own seamen would be bringing
such luggage back to the ship with them, to trade the fashionable coats and blue jeans for five times
their buying price to the black−marketeers of Odessa.
Thirty hours later theSanadria cleared the Bosporus, watched the Golden Horn drop away astern,
and chugged north for Bulgaria with her tractors.
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CHAPTER SEVEN 111
Due west of Dublin lies County Kildare, site of the Irish horse−racing center at the Curragh and of
the sleepy market town of Celbridge. On the outskirts of Celbridge stands the largest and finest
Palladian stately home in the land, Castletown House. With the agreement of the American and
Soviet
ambassadors, the Irish government had proposed Castletown as the venue for the
disarmament conference.
For a week, teams of painters, plasterers, electricians, and gardeners had been at work night and day
putting the final touches to the two rooms that would hold the twin conferences,
though no one
knew what the second conference would be for.
The facade of the main house alone is 142 feet wide, and from each corner covered and pillared
corridors lead away to further quarters. One of these wing blockscontains thekitchens and staff
apartments, and it was here the American security force would be quartered; the other block contains
the stables, with more apartments above them, and here the Russian bodyguards would live.
The principal house would act as both conference center and home for the subordinate diplomats,
who would inhabit the numerous guest rooms and suites on the top floor. Only the two principal
negotiators and their immediate aides would return each night to their respective embassies,
equipped as they were with facilities for coded communications with Washington and Moscow.
This time there was to be no secrecy, save in the matter of the secondary conference. Before a blaze
of world publicity the two foreign ministers, David Lawrence and Dmitri Rykov, arrived in Dublin
and were greeted bythe Irish President and Premier. After the habitual televised handshaking
and
toasting, they left Dublin in twin cavalcades for Castletown.
At midday on October 8, the two statesmen and their twenty advisers entered the vast Long Gallery,
decorated in Wedgwood
blue in the Pompeian manner and 140 feet long. Most of the center of the
hall was taken up with the gleaming Georgian table, down each side of which the delegations seated
themselves. Flanking each foreign minister were experts
in defense, weapons systems, nuclear
technology, inner space, and armored warfare.
The two statesmen knew they were there only to open the conference formally. After the opening
and the agreement of agenda, each would fly home to leave the talks in the hands of the delegation
leaders, Professor Ivan I. Sokolov for the Soviets and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Edwin
J. Campbell for the Americans.
The remaining rooms on this floor were given over to the stenographers, typists, and researchers.
One floor below, at ground level, in the great dining room of Castletown, with drapes drawn to mute
the autumn sunshine
pouring onto the southeastern face of the mansion, the secondary conference
quietly filed in to take their places. These were mainly technologists: experts in grain, oil,
computers,
and industrial plants.
Upstairs, Dmitri Rykov and David Lawrence each made a short address of welcome to the opposing
delegation and expressed the hope and the confidence that the conference would succeed in
diminishing the problems of a beleaguered and frightened world. Then they adjourned for lunch.
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CHAPTER SEVEN 112
After lunch Professor Sokolov had a private conference with Rykov before the latters departure for
Moscow.
You know our position, Comrade Professor, said Rykov. Frankly, it is not a good one. The
Americans will go for everything
they can get. Your job is to fight every step of the way to
minimize our concessions. But we must have that grain. Nevertheless, every concession on arms
levels and deployment
patterns in Eastern Europe must be referred back to Moscow. This is because
the Politburo insists on being involved
in approval or rejection in the sensitive areas.
He forbore to say that the sensitive areas were those that might impede a future Soviet strike into
Western Europe, or that Maxim Rudins political career hung by a thread.
In another drawing room at the opposite end of Castletowna room that, like Rykovs, had been
swept by his own electronics experts for possible bugsDavid Lawrence was conferring with
Edwin Campbell.
Its all yours, Ed. This wont be like Geneva. The Soviet problems wont permit endless delays,
adjournments, and referring back to Moscow for weeks on end. I estimate they have to have an
agreement with us within six months. Either that or they dont get the grain.
On the other hand, Sokolov will fight every inch of the way. We know each concession on arms
will have to be referred
to Moscow, but Moscow will have to decide fast one way or the other, or
else the time will run out.
One last thing. We know Maxim Rudin cannot be pushed too far. If he is, he could fall. But if he
doesnt get the wheat, he could fall, too. The trick will be to find the balance; to get the maximum
concessions without provoking a revolt in the Politburo.
Campbell removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had spent four years
commuting from Washington
to Geneva on the so−far−abortive SALT talks, and he was no
newcomer to the problems of trying to negotiate with Russians.
Hell, David, that sounds fine. But you know how they give nothing of their own inner position
away. It would be a hell of a help to know just how far they can be pushed, and where the stop line
lies.
David Lawrence opened hisattaché case and withdrew a sheaf of papers. He proffered them to
Campbell.
What are these? asked Campbell.
Lawrence chose his words carefully.
Nine days ago in Moscow the full Politburo authorized Maxim Rudin and Dmitri Rykov to begin
these talks. But only by a vote of seven against six. Theres a dissident faction inside the Politburo
that wishes to abort the talks and bring Rudin down. After the agreement the Politburo laid out the
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SEVEN 113
exact parameters of what Professor Sokolov could or could not concede, what the Politburo would or
would not allow Rudin to grant. Go beyond the parameters and Rudin could be toppled. If that
happened, we would have bad, very bad, problems.
So what are the papers? asked Campbell, holding the sheaf in his hands.
They came in from London last night, said Lawrence. They are the verbatim transcript of that
Politburo meeting.
Campbell stared at them in amazement.
Jesus, he breathed, we can dictate our own terms.
Not quite, corrected Lawrence. We can require the maximum that the moderate faction inside
the Politburo can get away with. Insist on more and we could be eating ashes.
The visit of the British Prime Minister and her Foreign Secretary
to Washington two days later was
described in the press as being informal. Ostensibly, Britains first woman premier was to address a
major meeting of the English−Speaking Union and take the opportunity of paying a courtesy call on
the President of the United States.
But the crux of the latter came in the Oval Office, where President Bill Matthews, flanked by his
national security adviser,
Stanislaw Poklewski, and his Secretary of State, David Lawrence, gave the
British visitors an exhaustive briefing on the hopeful start of the Castletown conference. The agenda,
reported President Matthews, had been agreed to with unusual
alacrity. At least three main areas for
future discussion had been defined between the two teams, with a minimal presence of the usual
Soviet objections to every dot and comma.
President Matthews expressed the hope that, after years of frustration, a comprehensive limitation of
arms levels and troop deployments along the Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Aegean could well
emerge from Castletown.
The crunch came as the meeting between the two heads of government closed.
We regard it as vital, maam, that the inside information of which we are in possession, and
without which the conference
could well fail, continue to reach us.
You mean the Nightingale, said the British Premier crisply.
Yes, maam, I do, said Matthews. We regard it as indispensable
that the Nightingale continue
to operate.
I understand your point, Mr. President, she answered calmly. But I believe that the hazard levels
of that operation are very high. I do not dictate to Sir Nigel Irvine what he shall or shall not do in the
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CHAPTER SEVEN 114
running of his service. I have too much respect for his judgment for that. But I will do what I can.
It was not until the traditional ceremony in front of the principal facade of the White House of seeing
the British visitors
into their limousines and smiling for the cameras was complete thatStanislaw
Poklewski could give vent to his feelings.
Theres no hazard to a Russian agent in the world that compares with the success or failure of the
Castletown talks, he said.
I agree, said Bill Matthews, but I understand from Bob Benson the hazard lies in the exposure of
the Nightingale at this point. If that happened, and he were caught, the Politburo
would learn what
had been passed over. If that happened,
they would shut off at Castletown. So the Nightingale either
has to be silenced or brought out, but neither until we have a treaty sewn up and signed. And that
could be six months yet.
That same evening, while the sun was still shining on Washington,
it was setting over the port of
Odessa as theSanadria dropped anchor in the roads. When the clatter of the anchor cable had ceased,
silence fell on the freighter, broken only by the low humming of the generators in the engine room
and the hiss of escaping steam on deck. Andrew Drake leaned on the focsle rail, watching the
lights of the port and city twinkle into life.
West of the ship, at the northern extremity of the port, lay the oil harbor and refinery, circled by
chain−link fencing. To the south, the port was bounded by the protective arm of the great seaward
mole. Ten miles beyond the mole the Dniester River flowed into the sea through the swampy
marshes where, five months before, Miroslav Kaminsky had stolen his skiff and made a desperate
bid for freedom. Now, thanks to him, Andrew DrakeAndriy Drachhad come home to the land of
his ancestors. But this time he had come armed.
That evening, Captain Thanos was informed that he would be brought into port and moored
alongside the following morning. Port health and customs officials visited theSanadria, but they
spent the hour on board closeted with Captain Thanos in his cabin, sampling his top−grade Scotch
whisky, kept for the occasion. There was no search of the ship. Watching the launch leave the ships
side, Drake wondered if Thanos had betrayed him. It would have been easy enough: Drake would be
arrested ashore; Thanos would sail with his five thousand dollars.
It all depended, he thought, on whether Thanos had accepted
his story of bringing money to his
fiancée. If he had, there was no motive to betray him, for the offense was routine enough; his own
sailors brought contraband goods into Odessa on every voyage, and dollar bills were only another
form of contraband. And if the rifle and pistols had been discovered, the simple thing would have
been to throw the lot into the sea and sling Drake off the ship, once back in Piraeus. Still, he could
neither eat nor sleep that night.
Just after dawn, the pilot boarded. TheSanadria weighed anchor, took a tug in attendance, and
moved slowly between the breakwaters and into her berth. Often, Drake had learned, there was a
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SEVEN 115
berthing delay in this, the most congested
of the Soviet Unions warm−water ports. They must want
their Vac−U−Vators badly. He had no idea how badly. Once the shore cranes had started to unload
the freighter, the watchkeepers among the crew were allowed to go ashore.
During the voyage Drake had become friendly with theSanadrias carpenter, a middle−aged Greek
seaman who had visited Liverpool and was keen to practice his twenty words of English. He had
repeated them continuously to his intense delight whenever he met Drake during the voyage, and
each time Drake had nodded furious encouragement and approval. He had explained to Constantino
in English and sign language
that he had a girl friend in Odessa and was bringing her presents.
Constantino approved. With a dozen others, they trooped down the gangway and headed for the dock
gates. Drake was wearing one of his best suede sheepskin coats, although the day was reasonably
warm.Constantino carried a duffel shoulder bag with a brace of bottles of export−proof Scotch
whisky.
The whole port area of Odessa is cordoned off from the city and its citizens by a high chain fence,
topped with barbed wire and arc lights. The main dock gates habitually stand open in the daytime,
the entrance being blocked only by a balanced red−and−white striped pole. This marks the
passageway
for lorries, with a customs official and two armed militiamen attending it.
Astride the entrance gate is a long, narrow shed, with one door inside the port area and one on the
outside. The party from theSanadria entered the first door, with Constantino in charge. There stood a
long counter, attended by one customs man, and a passport desk, attended by an immigration officer
and a militiaman. All three looked scruffy and exceptionally bored. Constantine approached the
customs man and dumped his shoulder bag on the counter. The official opened it and extracted
a
bottle of whisky. Constantine gestured that it was a present from one to the other. The customs man
managed a friendly nod and placed the bottle beneath his table.
Constantine clasped a brawny arm around Drake and pointed to him.
Droog,he said, and beamed widely. The customs man nodded that he understood the newcomer
was the Greek carpenter
s friend and should be recognized as such. Drake smiled broadly. He stood
back, eyeing the customs man as an outfitter eyes a customer. Then he stepped forward, slipped off
the sheepskin coat and held it out, indicating that he and the customs man were about the same size.
The official did not bother to try it on; it was a fine coat, worth a months salary at least. He smiled
his acknowledgment, placed the coat under the table, and waved the entire party through.
The immigration officer and militiaman showed no surprise.
The second bottle of whisky was for
the pair of them. TheSanadria crew members surrendered their seamans books, and in the case of
Drake his passport to the immigration
officer, and each received in return a shore pass from a
leather satchel the officer wore over his shoulder. Within a few minutes theSanadria party emerged
into the sunshine beyond
the shed.
Drakes rendezvous was in a smallcafé in the dockland area of old, cobbled streets, not far from the
Pushkin Monument,
where the ground rises from the docks to the main city. He found it after thirty
minutes of wandering, having separated
himself from his fellow seamen on the grounds that he
wanted to date his mythical girl friend. Constantino did not object; he had to contact his underworld
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SEVEN 116
friends to set up the delivery of his sackful of denim jeans.
It was Lev Mishkin who came, just after noon. He was wary, cautious, and sat alone, making no sign
of recognition. When he had finished his coffee, he rose and left thecafé. Drake followed him. Only
when the pair had reached the wide, sea−front highway of Primorsky Boulevard did he allow Drake
to catch up. They spoke as they walked.
Drake agreed that he would make his first run, with the handguns stuck in his waistband and the
imageintensifier in a duffel bag with two clinking bottles of whisky, that evening.
There would be
plenty of Western ships crews coming through for an evening in the dockland bars at the same
time. He would be wearing another sheepskin coat to cover the handguns in his belt, and the chill of
the evening air would justify his keeping the coat buttoned at the front Mishkin and his friend David
Lazareff would meet Drake in the darkness by the Pushkin Monument and take over the hardware.
Just after eight that evening, Drake came through with his first consignment. Jovially, he saluted the
customs man, who waved him on and called to his colleague at the passport desk. The immigration
man handed out a shore pass in exchange
for his passport, jerked his chin toward the open door to
the city of Odessa, and Drake was through. He was almost at the foot of the Pushkin Monument,
seeing the writers head raised against the stars above, when two figures joined him out of the
darkness between the plane trees that crowd Odessas open spaces.
Any problems? asked Lazareff.
None, said Drake.
Lets get it over with, said Mishkin. Both men were carrying
the briefcases that everyone seems
to carry in the Soviet Union. These cases, far from carrying documents, are the male version of the
string bags the women carry, called perhaps
bags. They get their name from the hope that the
women carry with them that perhaps they may spot a worthwhile
consumer article on sale and snap
it up before it is sold out or the queues form. Mishkin took the imageintensifier and stuffed it into his
larger briefcase; Lazareff took both the handguns, the spare ammunition slips, and the box of rifle
shells and put them in his own.
Were sailing tomorrow evening, said Drake. Ill have to bring the rifle in the morning.
Damn, said Mishkin, daylight is bad. David, you know the port area best. Where is it to be?
Lazareff considered. There is an alley, he said, between two crane−maintenance workshops.
He described the mud−colored workshops, not far from the docks.
The alley is short, narrow. One end looks toward the sea, the other to a third blank wall. Enter the
seaward end of the alley on the dot of elevenA.M. I will enter the other end. If there is anyone else in
the alley, walk on, go around the block, and try again. If the alley is empty, well take delivery.

How will you be carrying it? asked Mishkin.
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CHAPTER SEVEN 117
Wrapped around with sheepskin coats, said Drake, and stuffed in a kit bag about three feet
long.
Lets get out of here, said Lazareff. Someone is coming.

When Drake returned to theSanadria, the customs men had changed shifts and he was frisked. He
was clean. The next morning he asked Captain Thanos for an extra spell ashore on the grounds that
he wanted to spend the maximum time with hisfiancée. Thanos excused him from deck duties and let
him go. There was a nasty moment in the customs shed when Drake was asked to turn out his
pockets. Placing his kit bag on the ground, he obeyed and revealed a wad of four ten−dollar bills.
The customs man, who seemed to be in a bad mood, wagged an admonishing finger at Drake and
confiscated
the dollars. He ignored the kit bag. Sheepskin coats, it seemed, were respectable
contraband; dollars were not.
The alley was empty, save for Mishkin and Lazareff walking
down from one end and Drake
walking up from the other. Mishkin gazed beyond Drake to the seaward end of the alley; when they
were abreast he said, Go, and Drake hefted the kit bag onto the shoulder of Lazareff. Good
luck, he said as he walked on, see you in Israel.
Sir Nigel Irvine retained membership in three clubs in the west of London, but selected Brookss for
his dinner with Barry Ferndale and Adam Munro. By custom the serious business of the evening was
left until they had quit the dining room and retired to the subscription room, where the coffee, port,
and cigars were served.
Sir Nigel had asked the chief steward, called the dispense waiter, to reserve his favorite corner, near
the windows looking
down into St. Jamess Street, and four deep leather club chairs were waiting
for them when they arrived. Munro selected brandy and water; Ferndale and Sir Nigel took a
decanter
of the clubs vintage port and had it set on the table between them. Silence reigned while
the cigars were lit, the coffee sipped. From the walls the Dilettantes, the eighteenth−century group of
men−about−town, gazed down at them.
Now, my dear Adam, what seems to be the problem? asked Sir Nigel at last. Munro glanced to a
nearby table where two senior civil servants conversed. For keen ears, they were within
eavesdropping distance. Sir Nigel noticed the look.
Unless we shout, he observed equably, no one is going to hear us. Gentlemen do not listen to
other gentlemens conversations.

Munro thought this over.
We do, he said simply.
Thats different, said Ferndale. Its our job.
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CHAPTER SEVEN 118
All right, said Munro. I want to bring the Nightingale out.
Sir Nigel studied the tip of his cigar.
Ah, yes, he said. Any particular reason?
Partly strain, said Munro. The original tape recording in July had to be stolen, and a blank
substituted in its place. That could be discovered, and its preying on the Nightingale
s mind.
Secondly, the chances of discovery. Every abstraction
of Politburo minutes heightens this. We now
know Maxim Rudin is fighting for his political life, and the succession
when he goes. If the
Nightingale gets careless, or is even unlucky, he could get caught.
Adam, thats one of the risks of defecting, said Ferndale. It goes with the job. Penkovsky was
caught.
Thats the point, pursued Munro. Penkovsky had provided
just about all he could. The Cuban
missile crisis was over. There was nothing the Russians could do to undo the damage that Penkovsky
had done to them.
I would have thought that was a good reason for keeping the Nightingale in place, observed Sir
Nigel. There is still an awful lot more he can do for us.
Or the reverse, said Munro. If the Nightingale comes out, the Kremlin can never know what has
been passed. If he is caught, theyll make him talk. What he can reveal now will be enough to bring
Rudin down. This would seem to be the moment the West precisely would not wish Rudin to fall.
Indeed it is, said Sir Nigel. Your point is taken. Its a question of a balance of chances. If we
bring the Nightingale out, the KGB will check back for months. The missing tape will presumably be
discovered, and the supposition will be that even more was passed over before he left. If he is caught,
its even worse; a complete record of what he has passed over will be extracted from him. Rudin
could well fall as a result. Even though Vishnayev would probably be disgraced
also, the
Castletown talks would abort. Thirdly, we keep the Nightingale in place until the Castletown talks
are over and the arms−limitation agreement is signed. By then there will be nothing the war faction
in the Politburo can do. Its a teasing choice.
Id like to bring him out, said Munro. Failing that, let him lie low, cease transmitting.
Id like him to go on, said Ferndale, at least until the end of Castletown.
Sir Nigel reflected on the alternative arguments.
I spent the afternoon with the Prime Minister, he said at length. The P.M. made a request, a very
strong request, on behalf of herself and the President of the U.S.A. I cannot at this moment turn that
request down unless it could be shown the Nightingale was on the very threshold of exposure. The
Americans regard it as vital to their chances of securing an all−embracing treaty at Castletown that
the Nightingale keep them abreast of the Soviet negotiating position. At least until the New Year.
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So Ill tell you what Ill do. Barry, prepare a plan to bring the Nightingale out. Something that can
be activated at short notice. Adam, if the fuse begins to burn under the Nightingale
s tail, well
bring him out. Fast. But for the moment the Castletown talks and the frustration of the Vishnayev
clique have to take first priority. Three or four more transmissions
should see the Castletown talks
in their final stages. The Soviets cannot delay some sort of a wheat agreement beyond
February or
March at the latest. After that, Adam, the Nightingale can come to the West, and Im sure the
Americans
will show their gratitude in the habitual manner.
The dinner in Maxim Rudins private suite in the Kremlins inner sanctum was far more private
than that at Brookss in London. No confidence concerning the integrity of gentlemen where other
gentlemens conversations are concerned has ever marred the acute caution of the men of the
Kremlin. There was no one within earshot but the silent Misha when Rudin took his place in his
favorite chair of the study and gestured Ivanenko and Petrov to other seats.
What did you make of todays meeting? Rudin asked Petrov
without preamble. The controller of
the Party Organizations
of the Soviet Union shrugged.
We got away with it, he said. Rykovs report was masterly.
But we still have to make some
pretty sweeping concessions
if we want that wheat And Vishnayev is still after his war.
Rudin grunted.
Vishnayev is after my job, he said bluntly. Thats his ambition. Its Kerensky who wants the
war. He wants to use his armed forces before hes too old.
Surely it amounts to the same thing, said Ivanenko. If Vishnayev can topple you, he will be so
beholden to Kerensky he will neither be able, nor particularly wish, to oppose Kerenskys recipe for
a solution to all the Soviet Unions problems. He will let Kerensky have his war next spring or early
summer. Between them theyll devastate everything it has taken two generations to achieve.
What is the news from your debriefing yesterday? asked Rudin. He knew Ivanenko had recalled
two of his most senior
men from the Third World for consultations face−to−face. One was the
controller of all subversive operations throughout
Africa, the other his counterpart for the Middle
East.
Optimistic, said Ivanenko. The capitalists have screwed up their African policies for so long
now, their position is virtually
irrecoverable. The liberals rule still in Washington and London, at
least in foreign affairs. They are so totally absorbed
with South Africa, they dont seem to notice
Nigeria and Kenya at all. Both are on the verge of falling to us. The French in Senegal are proving
more difficult. In the Middle East, I think we can count on Saudi Arabias falling within three years.
Theyre almost encircled.
Time scale? asked Rudin.
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Within a few yearssay, by 1990 at the outsidewe shall effectively control the oil and the sea
routes. The euphoria campaign in Washington and London is being steadily increased, and it is
working.
Rudin exhaled his smoke and stubbed the tube of his cigarette
into an ashtray proffered by Misha.
I wont see it, he said, but you two will. Inside a decade the West will die of malnutrition, and
we wont have to fire a shot. All the more reason why Vishnayev must be stopped while there is still
time.
Four kilometers southwest of the Kremlin, inside a tight loop in the Moscow River and not far from
the Lenin Stadium, stands the ancient monastery of Novodevichi. Its main entrance
is right across
the street from the principal Beriozka shop, where the rich and privileged, or foreigners, may buy for
hard currency luxuries unobtainable by the common people.
The monastery grounds contain three lakes and a cemetery,
and access to the cemetery is available
to pedestrians. The gatekeeper will seldom bother to stop those bearing bunches of flowers.
Adam Munro parked his car In the Beriozka parking lot, among others whose number plates revealed
them to belong to the privileged.
Where do you hide a tree? his instructor used to ask the class. In a forest. And where do you
bide a pebble? On the beach. Always keep it natural.
Munro crossed the road, traversed the cemetery with his bunch of carnations, and foundValentina
waiting for him by one of the smaller lakes. Late October had brought the first bitter winds off the
steppes to the east, and gray, scudding clouds across the sky. The surface of the water rippled and
shivered in the wind.
I asked them in London, he said gently. They told me it is too risky at the moment. Their answer
was that to bring you out now would reveal the missing tape, and thus the fact of the transcripts
having been passed over. They feel if that happened, the Politburo would withdraw from the talks in
Ireland and revert to the Vishnayev plan.
She shivered slightly, whether from the chill of the lakeside or from fear of her own masters he could
not tell. He put an arm around her and held her to him.
They may be right, she said quietly. At least the Politburois negotiating for food and peace, not
preparing for war.
Rudin and his group seem to be sincere in that, he suggested.
She snorted.
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They are as bad as the others, she said. Without the pressure they would not be there at all.
Well, the pressure is on, said Munro. The grain is coming
in. They know the alternatives now. I
think the world will get its peace treaty.
If it does, what I have done will have been worthwhile, saidValentina. I dont want Sasha to
grow up among the rubble as I did, nor live with a gun in his hand. That is what they would have for
him, up there in the Kremlin.
He wont, said Munro. Believe me, my darling, hell grow up in freedom, in the West, with
you as his mother and me as his stepfather. My principals have agreed to bring you out in the
spring.
She looked up at him with hope shining in her eyes.
In the spring? Oh, Adam, when in the spring?
The talks cannot go on for too long. The Kremlin needs its grain by April at the latest, The last of
the supplies and all the reserves will have run out by then. When the treaty is agreed upon, perhaps
even before it is signed, you and Sasha will be brought out. Meanwhile, I want you to cut down on
the risks you are taking. Only bring out the most vital material concerning the peace talks at
Castletown.
Theres one in here, she said, nudging the bag over her shoulder. Its from ten days ago. Most
of it is so technical I cant understand it. It refers to permissible reductions of mobile
SS−Twenties.
Munro nodded grimly.
Tactical rockets with nuclear warheads, highly accurate and highly mobile, borne on the backs of
tracked vehicles and parked in groves of trees and under netting all across Eastern Europe.
Twenty−four hours later, the package was on its way to London.
Three days before the end of the month, an old lady was heading down Sverdlov Street in central
Kiev toward her apartment block. Though she was entitled to a car and a chauffeur, she had been
born and brought up in the country, of strong peasant stock. Even in her mid−seventies she
preferred
to walk rather than drive for short distances. Her visit to spend the evening with a friend
two blocks away was so short she had dismissed the car and chauffeur for the night. It was just after
ten when she crossed the road in the direction of her own front door.
She didnt see the car, it came so fast. One minute she was in the middle of the road with no one
about but two pedestrians
a hundred yards away; the next, the vehicle was on her, lights blazing,
tires squealing. She froze. The driver seemed to steer right at her, then swerved away. The wing of
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SEVEN 122
the vehicle crashed into her hip, bowling her over in the gutter. It failed to stop, roaring away toward
Kreshchatik Boulevard at the end of the Sverdlov. She vaguely heard the crunch of feet running
toward her as passersby came to her aid.
That evening, Edwin J. Campbell, the chief U.S. negotiator at the Castletown talks, arrived back,
tired and frustrated, at the ambassadorial residence in Phoenix Park. It was an elegant mansion that
America provided its envoy in Dublin, and fully modernized, with handsome guest suites, the finest
of which Edwin Campbell had taken over. He was looking forward to a long, hot bath and a rest.
When he had dropped his coat and responded to his hosts greeting, one of the messengers from the
embassy handed him a fatmanila envelope. As a result his sleep was curtailed that night, but it was
worth it.
The next day, he took his place in the Long Gallery at Castletown and gazed impassively across the
table at Professor
Ivan I. Sokolov.
All right, Professor, he thought, I know what you can concede and what you cannot. So lets get on
with it.
It took forty−eight hours for the Soviet delegate to agree to cut the Warsaw Pact presence of tracked
tactical nuclear rockets in Eastern Europe by half. Six hours later, in the dining
room, a protocol
was agreed whereby the United States would sell the USSR $200 million worth of oil−drilling and
−extraction technology at bargain−basement prices.
The old lady was unconscious when the ambulance brought her to the general hospital of Kiev, the
October Hospital at 39Karl Liebknecht Street. She remained so until the following morning. When
she was able to explain who she was, panicked officials had her wheeled out of the general ward and
into a private room, which rapidly filled with flowers. During that day the finest orthopedic surgeon
in Kiev operated
to set her broken femur.
In Moscow, Ivanenko took a call from his personal aide and listened intently.
I understand, he said without hesitation. Inform the authorities
that I shall come at once. What?
Well, then, when she has come out of the anesthetic. Tomorrow night? Very well, arrange it.
It was bitter cold on the evening of the last night of October. There was no one moving in Rosa
Luxemburg Street, onto which the October Hospital backs. The two long black limousines
stood
unobserved at the curb by this back entrance which the KGB chief had chosen to use rather than the
grand portico at the front.
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The whole area stands on a slight rise of ground, amid trees, and farther down the street, on the
opposite side, an annex to the hospital was under construction, its unfinished upper levels jutting
above the greenery. The watchers among the frozen cement sacks rubbed their hands to keep the
circulation
going, and stared at the two cars by the door, dimly illuminated
by a single bulb above
the archway.
When he came down the stairs, the man with seven seconds
to live was wearing a long, fur−collared
overcoat and thick gloves, even for the short walk across the pavement to the warmth of the waiting
car. He had spent two hours with his mother, comforting her and assuring her the culprits would be
found, as the abandoned car had been found.
He was preceded by an aide, who ran ahead and flicked off the doorway light. The door and the
pavement were plunged into darkness. Only then did Ivanenko advance to the door, held open by one
of his six bodyguards, and pass through it. The knot of four others outside parted as his fur−coated
figure
emerged, merely a shadow among shadows.
He advanced quickly to the Zil, engine running, across the pavement. He paused for a second as the
passenger door was swung open, and died, the bullet from the hunting rifle skewering
through his
forehead, splintering the parietal bone and exiting through the rear of the cranium to lodge in an
aides shoulder.
The crack of the rifle, the whack of the impacting bullet, and the first cry from Colonel Yevgeni
Kukushkin, his senior bodyguard, took less than a second. Before the slumping man had hit the
pavement, the plainclothes colonel had him under the armpits, dragging him into the recesses− of the
rear seat of the Zil. Before the door was closed, the colonel was screaming,
Drive! Drive! to the
shocked driver.
Colonel Kukushkin pillowed the bleeding head in his lap as the Zil screeched away from the curb.
He thought fast. It was not merely a question of a hospital, but of which hospital for a man like this.
As the Zil cleared the end of Rosa Luxemburg
Street, the colonel flicked on the interior light. What
he sawand he had seen much in his careerwas enough to tell him his master was beyond hospitals.
His second reaction
was programmed into his mind and his job : no one must know. The
unthinkable had happened, and no one must know, save only those entitled to know. He had secured
his promotion and his job by his presence of mind. Watching the second limousine, the bodyguards
Chaika, swing out of Rosa Luxemburg Street behind them, he ordered the driver to choose a quiet
and darkened street not less than two miles away, and park.
Leaving the curtained and motionless Zil at the curb, with the bodyguards scattered in a screen
around it, he took off his blood−soaked coat and set off on foot. He finally made his phone call from
a militia barracks, where his I.D. card and rank secured him instant access to the commandants
private office and phone. It also secured him a direct line. He was patched through in fifteen minutes.
I must speak to Comrade Secretary−General Rudin urgently,
 he told the Kremlin switchboard
operator. The woman knew from the line on which the call was coming that this was neither joke nor
impertinence. She put it through to an aide inside the Armory Building, who held the call and spoke
to Maxim Rudin on the internal phone. Rudin authorized the transfer of the call.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER SEVEN 124
Yes, he grunted on the line, Rudin here.
Colonel Kukushkin had never spoken to him before, though he had seen him and heard him at close
quarters many times. He knew it was Rudin. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and spoke.
At the other end, Rudin listened, asked two brief questions, rapped out a string of orders, and put the
phone down. He turned to Vassili Petrov, who was with him, leaning forward, alert and worried.
Hes dead, said Rudin in disbelief. Not a heart attack. Shot. Yuri Ivanenko. Someone has just
assassinated the chairman
of the KGB.
Beyond the windows the clock in the tower above Savior Gate chimed midnight, and a sleeping
world began to move slowly toward war.

Chapter Eight


THE KGB has always ostensibly been answerable to the Soviet
Council of Ministers. In practice, it
answers to the Politburo.
The everyday working of the KGB, the appointment of every
officer within it, every promotion, and
the rigorous indoctrination
of every stafferall are supervised by the Politburo through the Party
Organizations Section of the Central Committee.
At every stage of the career of every KGB man, he
is watched, informed on, and reported on; even the watchdogs of the Soviet Union are never
themselves free of watching. Thus it is unlikely that this most pervasive and powerful of control
machines can ever run out of control.
In the wake of the assassination of Yuri Ivanenko, it was Vassili Petrov who took command of the
cover−up operation, which Maxim Rudin directly and personally ordered.
Over the telephone Rudin had ordered Colonel Kukushkin to bring the two−car cavalcade straight
back to Moscow by road, stopping neither for food, drink, nor sleep, driving through the night,
refueling the Zil bearing Ivanenkos corpse with jerry−cans, brought to the car by the Chaika and
always out of sight of passersby.
On arrival at the outskirts of Moscow, the two cars were directed straight to the Politburos own
private clinic at Kuntsevo, where the corpse with the shattered head was quietly buried amid the pine
forest within the clinic perimeter, in an unmarked grave. The burial party was of Ivanenkos own
bodyguards, all of whom were then placed under house arrest at one of the Kremlins own villas in
the forest. The guard detail on these men was drawn not from the KGB but from the Kremlin palace
guard.
Only Colonel Kukushkin was not held incommunicado. He was summoned to Petrovs private
office in the Central Committee
Building.
The colonel was a frightened man, and when he left Petrov
s office he was little less so. Petrov
gave him one chance to save his career and his life: he was put in charge of the cover−up operation.
TheDevil'sAlternative
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At the Kuntsevo clinic he organized the closure of one entire
ward and brought fresh KGB men
from Dzerzhinsky Square to mount guard on it. Two KGB doctors were transferred
to Kuntsevo and
put in charge of the patient in the closed ward, a patient who was in fact an empty bed. No one else
was allowed in, but the two doctors, knowing only enough to be badly frightened, ferried all the
equipment and medicaments into the closed ward that would be needed for the treatment of a heart
attack. Within twenty−four hours, save for the closed ward in the secret clinic off the road from
Moscow to Minsk, Yuri Ivanenko had ceased to exist.
At this early stage, only one other man was let into the secret. Among Ivanenkos six deputies, all
with their offices close to his on the third floor of KGB Center, one was his official
deputy as
chairman of the KGB. Petrov summoned GeneralKonstantin Abrassov to his office and informed
him of what had happened, a piece of information that shook the general as nothing in a thirty−year
career in secret police work had done. Inevitably he agreed to continue the masquerade.
In the October Hospital in Kiev, the dead mans mother was surrounded by local KGB men and
continued to receive daily written messages of comfort from her son.
Finally, the three workmen on the annex to the October Hospital who had discovered a hunting rifle
and night−sight when they came to work the morning after the shooting were removed with their
families to one of the camps in Mordovia, and two detectives were flown in from Moscow to
investigate an act of hooliganism. Colonel Kukushkin was with them. The story they were given was
that the shot had been fired at the moving car of a local Party official; it had passed through the
windshield and been recovered from the upholstery. The real bullet, recovered from the KGB
guards shoulder and well washed, was presented to them. They were told to trace and identify the
hooligans in conditions of complete secrecy. Somewhat perplexed and much frustrated, they
proceeded to try. Work on the annex was stopped, the half−finished building
sealed off, and all the
forensic equipment they could ask for supplied. The only thing they did not get was a true
explanation.
When the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle of deception was in place, Petrov reported personally to
Rudin. To the old chief fell the worst task, that of informing the Politburo of what had really
happened.
The private report of Dr. Myron Fletcher of the Agriculture Department to President William
Matthews two days later was all and more than the ad hoc committee formed under the personal
auspices of the President could have wished for. Not only had the benign weather brought North
America a bumper crop in all areas of grain and cereals; it had broken existing records. Even with
probable requirements for domestic
consumption taken care of, even with existing aid levels to the
poor countries of the world maintained, the surplus would nudge sixty million tons for the combined
harvest of the United States and Canada.
Mr. President, youve got it, saidStanislaw Poklewski. You can buy that surplus any time you
wish at Julys price. Bearing in mind the progress at the Castletown talks, the House Appropriations
Committee will not stand in your way.
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CHAPTER EIGHT 126
I should hope not, said the President. If we succeed at Castletown, the reductions in defense
expenditures will more than compensate for the commercial losses on the grains. What about the
Soviet crop?
Were working on it, said Bob Benson. The Condors are sweeping right across the Soviet
Union, and our analysts are working out the yields of harvested grain, region by region. We should
have a report for you in a week. We can correlate that with reports from our people on the ground
over there, and give a pretty accurate figureto within five percent, anyway.

As soon as you can, said President Matthews. I need to know the exact Soviet position in every
area. That includes the Politburo reaction to their own grain harvest. I need to know their strengths
and their weaknesses. Please get them for me, Bob.
No one in the Ukraine that winter would be likely to forget the sweeps by the KGB and militia
against those in whom the slightest hint of nationalist sentiment could be detected.
While Colonel Kukushkins two detectives carefully interviewed
the pedestrians in Sverdlov Street
the night Ivanenkos mother had been run down, meticulously took to pieces the stolen car that had
performed the hit−and−run job on the old lady, and pored over the rifle, the imageintensifier, and the
area surrounding the hospital annex, General Abrassov went for the nationalists.
Hundreds were detained in Kiev, Ternopol, Lvov, Kanev, Rovno, Zhitomir, and Vinnitsa. The local
KGB, supported by teams from Moscow, carried out the interrogations, ostensibly concerned with
sporadic outbreaks of hooliganism such as the mugging of the KGB plainclothes man in August in
Ternopol.
Some of the senior interrogators were permitted to know their inquiries also concerned
the firing of a shot in Kiev in late October, but no more.
In the seedy Lvov working−class district of Levandivka that November, David Lazareff and Lev
Mishkin strolled through the snowy streets during one of their rare meetings. Because the fathers of
both had been taken away to the camps, they knew time would run out for them eventually also. The
wordJew was stamped on the identity card of each, as on those of every one of the Soviet Unions
three million Jews. Sooner or later, the spotlight of the KGB must swing away from the nationalists
to the Jews. Nothing ever changes that much in the Soviet Union.
I posted the card to Andriy Drach yesterday, confirming the success of the first objective, said
Mishkin. How are things with you?
So far, so good, said Lazareff. Perhaps things will ease off soon.
Not this time, I think, said Mishkin. We have to make our break soon if we are going to at all.
The ports are out. It has to be by air. Same place next week. Ill see what I can discover about the
airport.
Far away to the north of them an S.A.S. jumbo jet thundered
on its polar route from Stockholm to
Tokyo. Among its first−class passengers it bore CaptainThor Larsen toward his new command.
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Maxim Rudins reportto the Politburo was delivered in his gravelly voice, without frills. But no
histrionics in the world could have kept his audience more absorbed, nor their reaction
more
stunned. Since an Army officer had emptied a handgun at the limousine of Leonid Brezhnev as he
passed through the Kremlins Borovitsky Gate a decade before, the specter of the lone man with a
gun penetrating the walls of security around the hierarchs had persisted. Now it had come out of
conjecture to sit and stare at them from their own green baize table.
This time, the room was empty of secretaries. No tape recorders turned on the corner table. No aides,
no stenographers
were present. When he had finished, Rudin handed the floor to Petrov, who
described the elaborate measures taken to mask the outrage, and the secret steps then in progress to
identify and eliminate the killers after they had revealed all their accomplices.
But you have not found them yet? snapped Stepanov.
It is only five days since the attack, said Petrov evenly. No, not yet. They will be caught, of
course. They cannot escape,
whoever they are. When they are caught, they will reveal
every last
one of those who helped them. General Abrassov will see to that. Then every last person who knows
what happened that night on Rosa Luxemburg Street, wherever
they may be hiding, will be
eliminated. There will be no trace left.
And in the meantime? asked Komarov.
In the meantime, said Rudin, it must be maintained with unbreakable solidarity that Comrade
Yuri Ivanenko has sustained a massive heart attack and is under intensive care. Let us be clear on
one thing. The Soviet Union cannot and will not tolerate the public humiliation of the worlds ever
being allowed to know what happened on Rosa Luxemburg Street. There are no Lee Harvey
Oswalds in Russia, and never will be.
There was a murmur of assent. No one was prepared to disagree with Rudins assessment.
With respect, Comrade Secretary−General, Petrov cut in, while the catastrophe of such news
leaking abroad cannot be overestimated, there is another aspect, equally serious. If this news leaked
out, the rumors would begin among our own population. Before long they would be more than
rumors. The effect internally I leave to your imagination.
They all knew how closely the maintenance of public order was linked to a belief in the
impregnability and invincibility of the KGB.
If this news leaked out, said Chavadze the Georgian slowly, and even more so if the perpetrators
escaped, the effect
would be as bad as that of the grain famine.
They cannot escape, said Petrov sharply. They must not. They shall not.
Then who are they? growled Kerensky.
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CHAPTER EIGHT 128
We do not yet know, Comrade Marshal, replied Petrov, but we will.
But it was a Western gun, insisted Shushkin. Could the West be behind this?
I think it almost impossible, said Rykov. No Western government, no Third World government,
would be crazy enough to support such an outrage, in the same way as we had nothing to do with the
Kennedy assassination.Émigrés, possibly. Anti−Soviet fanatics, possibly. But not governments.
Émigrégroups abroad are also being investigated, said Petrov. But discreetly. We have most of
them penetrated. So far, nothing has come in. The rifle, ammunition, and night−sight are all of
Western make. They are all commercially purchasable
in the West. That they were smuggled in is
beyond doubt. Which means either the users brought them in, or they had outside help. General
Abrassov agrees with me that the primary requirement is to find the users, who will reveal their
suppliers. Department V will take over from there.
Yefrem Vishnayev watched the proceedings with keen interest
but took little part. Kerensky
expressed the dissatisfaction
of the dissident group instead. Neither sought a further vote on the
choice of the Castletown talks or a war in 1983. Both knew that in the event of a tie, the Chairmans
vote would prevail. Rudin had come one step nearer to falling but was not finished yet.
The meeting agreed that the announcement should be made, only within the KGB and the upper
echelons of the Party machine, that Yuri Ivanenko had suffered a heart attack
and been hospitalized.
When the killers had been identified
and they and their aides had been eliminated, Ivanenko would
quietly expire from his illness.
Rudin was about to summon the secretaries to the chamber for the resumption of the usual Politburo
meeting when Stepanov, who had originally voted for Rudin and negotiations with the United States,
raised his hand.
Comrades, I would regard it as a major defeat for our country if the killers of Yuri Ivanenko were
to escape and publish their action to the world. Should that happen, I would not be able to continue
my support for the policy of negotiation and further concession in the matter of our armaments
levels in exchange for American grain. I would switch my support to the proposal of Party
theoretician Vishnayev.
There was dead silence.
So would I, said Shushkin.
Eight against four, thought Rudin as he gazed impassively down the table. Eight against four if these
two shits change sides now.
Your point is taken, Comrades, said Rudin without a flicker of emotion. There will be no
publication of this deed. None at all.
Ten minutes later, the meeting reopened with a unanimous expression of regret at the sudden illness
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER EIGHT 129
of Comrade Ivanenko. The subject then turned to the newly arrived figures
of wheat and grain
yields.
The Zil limousine of Yefrem Vishnayev erupted from the mouth of the Borovitsky Gate at the
Kremlins southwestern corner and straight acrossManège Square. The policeman on duty in the
square, forewarned by his bleeper that the Politburo
cavalcade was leaving the Kremlin, had
stopped all traffic.
Within seconds the long, black, hand−tooled cars were scorching up Frunze
Street, past the Defense Ministry, toward the homes of the privileged on KutuzovskyProspekt.
Marshal Kerensky sat beside Vishnayev in the latters car, having accepted his invitation to drive
together. The partition between the spacious rear area and the driver was closed and soundproof. The
curtains shut out the gaze of the pedestrians.
Hes near to falling, growled Kerensky.
No, said Vishnayev, hes one step nearer and a lot weaker without Ivanenko, but hes not near
to falling yet. Dont underestimate Maxim Rudin. Hell fight like a cornered bear on the taiga
before he goes, but go he will because go he must.
Well, theres not much time, said Kerensky.
Less than you think, said Vishnayev. There were food riots in Vilnius last week. Our friend
Vitautas, who voted for our proposal in July, is getting nervous. He was on the verge of switching
sides despite the very attractive villa I have offered
him next to my own at Sochi. Now he is back in
the fold, and Shushkin and Stepanov may change sides in our favor.

But only if the killers escape, or the truth is published abroad, said Kerensky.
Precisely. And that is what must happen.
Kerensky turned in the back seat, his florid face turning brick−red beneath his shock of white hair.
Reveal the truth? To the whole world? We cant do that, he exploded.
No, we cant There are far too few people who know the truth, and mere rumors cannot succeed.
They can be too easily
discounted. An actor looking precisely like Ivanenko could be found,
rehearsed, seen in public. So others must do it for us. With absolute proof. The guards who were
present that night arein the hands of the Kremlin elite. That leaves only the killers themselves.
But we dont have them, said Kerensky, and are not likely to. The KGB will get them first.
Probably, but we have to try, said Vishnayev. Lets be plain about this, Nikolai. We are not
fighting for the control of the Soviet Union anymore. We are fighting for our lives, like Rudin and
Petrov. First the wheat, now Ivanenko. One more scandal, Nikolai, one more. Whoever is
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responsiblelet me make that clear, whoever is responsibleRudin will fall. There must be one more
scandal. We must ensure that there is.
Thor Larsen,dressed in overalls and a safety helmet, stood on a gantry crane high above the dry dock
at the center of the Ishikawajima−Harima shipyard and gazed down at the mass of the vessel that
would one day be theFreya.
Even three days after his first sight, the size of her took his breath away. In his apprenticeship days,
tankers had never gone beyond 30,000 tons, and it was not until 1956 that the worlds first over that
tonnage took the sea. They had to create a new class for such vessels, and called them supertankers.
When someone broke the 50,000−ton ceiling, there was another new class, the VLCC, or Very Large
Crude Carrier.
As the 200,000−ton barrier was broken in the late sixties, the new class of Ultra
Large Crude Carrier, or ULCC, came into being.
Once, at sea, Larsen had seen one of the French leviathans,
weighing in at 550,000 tons, move past
him. His crew had poured out on deck to watch her. What lay below him now was twice that size. As
Wennerstrom had said, the world had never seen the like of her, nor ever would again.
She was 515 meters long, or 1,689 feet, or ten city blocks. She was 90 meters broad, or 295 feet from
scupper to scupper,
and her superstructure reared five stories into the air above her deck. Far below
what he could see of her deck area, her keel plunged 36 meters, or 118 feet, toward the floor of the
dry dock. Each of her sixty holds was bigger than a neighborhood cinema. Deep in her bowels below
the superstructure,
the four steam turbines mustering a total of 90,000 shaft horsepower were
already installed, ready to drive her twin screws, whose 40−foot−diameter bronze propellers could
be vaguely seen glinting below her stern.
From end to end she teemed with antlike figures, the workers
preparing to leave her temporarily
while the dock was filled. For twelve months, almost to the day, they had cut and burned, bolted,
sawed, riveted, hacked, plated, and hammered the hull of her together. Great modules of high−tensile
steel had swung in from the overhead gantries to drop into preassigned places and form her shape.
As the men cleared away the ropes and chains, lines and cables that hung about her, she lay exposed
at last, her sides clean of encumbrances, painted twenty coats of rustproof paint, waiting for the
water.
At last, only the blocks that cradled her remained. The men who had built this, the biggest dry dock
in the world, at Chita, near Nagoya on Ise Bay, had never thought to see their handiwork put to such
use. It was the only dry dock that could take a million−tonner, and it was the first and last it would
ever hold. Some of the veterans came to peer across the barriers to see the ceremony.
The religious ceremony took half an hour as the Shinto priest called down the blessings of the divine
ones on those who had built her, those who would work on her yet, and those who would sail her one
day, that they should enjoy safe labor and safe sailing.Thor Larsen attended, barefoot, with his chief
engineer and first officer, the owners chief superintendent
(marine architect), who had been there
from the start, and the yards equivalent architect. The latter were the two men who had really
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designed and built her.
Shortly before noon the sluices were opened, and with a thundering roar the western Pacific began to
flow in.
There was a formal lunch in the chairmans office, but when it was over,Thor Larsen went back to
the dock. He was joined by his first officer, Stig Lundquist, and his chief engineer,Björn Erikson,
both from Sweden.
Shes something else, said Lundquist as the water climbed her sides.
Shortly before sunset theFreya groaned like an awaking giant, moved half an inch, groaned again,
then came free of her underwater supports and rode the tide. Around the dock, four thousand
Japanese workers broke their studied silence and burst into cheering. Scores of white helmets were
thrown into the air; the half−dozen Europeans from Scandinavia joined in, pumping hands and
thumping backs. Below them the giant waited patiently, seemingly aware her turn would come.
The next day, she was towed out of the dock to the commissioning
quay, where for three months
she would once again play host to thousands of small figures working like demons to prepare her for
the sea beyond the bay.
Sir Nigel Irvine read the last lines of the Nightingale transcript,
closed the file, and leaned back.
Well, Barry, what do you make of it?
Barry Ferndale had spent most of his working life studying the Soviet Union, its masters and power
structure. He breathed once more on his glasses and gave them a final rub.
Its one more blow that Maxim Rudins going to have to survive, he said. Ivanenko was one of
his staunchest supporters.
And an exceptionally clever one. With him in hospital,
Rudin has lost
one of his ablest counselors.
Will Ivanenko still retain his vote in the Politburo? asked Sir Nigel.
Its possible he can vote by proxy should another vote come, said Ferndale, but thats not really
the point. Even at a six−to−six tie on a major issue of policy at Politburo level, the Chairmans vote
swings the issue. The danger is that one or two of the waverers might change sides. Ivanenko upright
inspired a lot of fear, even that high up. Ivanenko in an oxygen
tent, perhaps less so.
Sir Nigel handed the folder across the desk to Ferndale.
Barry, I want you to go over to Washington with this one. Just a courtesy call, of course. But try to
have a private dinner
with BenKahn and compare notes with him. This exercise
is becoming too
damn much of a close−run thing.
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The way we see it, Ben, said Ferndale, two days later, after dinner in Kahns Georgetown house,
is that Maxim Rudin is holding on by a thread in the face of a fifty−percent hostile Politburo, and
that thread is getting extremely thin.
The Deputy Director (Intelligence) of the CIA stretched his feet toward the log fire in his redbrick
grate and gazed at the brandy he twirled in his glass.
I cant fault you on that, Barry, he said carefully.
We also are of the view that if Rudin cannot persuade the Politburo to continue conceding the
things he is yielding to you at Castletown, he could fall. That would leave a fight for the succession,
to be decided by the full Central Committee. In which, alas, Yefrem Vishnayev has a powerful
amount of influence and friends.
True, saidKahn. But then so does Vassili Petrov. Probably
more than Vishnayev.
No doubt, rejoined Ferndale, and Petrov would probably
swing the succession toward
himselfif he had the backing
of Rudin, who was retiring in his own time and on his own terms, and
if he had the support of Ivanenko, whose KGB clout could help offset Marshal Kerenskys influence
through the Red Army.
Kahnsmiled across at his visitor.
Youre moving a lot of pawns forward, Barry. Whats your gambit?
Just comparing notes, said Ferndale.
All right, just comparing notes. Actually our own views at Langley go along pretty much with
yours. David Lawrence at the State Department agrees. Stan Poklewski wants to ride the Soviets
hard at Castletown. The Presidents in the middleas usual.
Castletowns pretty important to him, though? suggested Ferndale.
Very important. He has only two more years in office. In November 1984, therell be a new
President−elect. Bill Matthews
would like to go out in style, leaving a comprehensive
arms−limitation treaty behind him.
We were just thinking ...
Ah, saidKahn, I think you are contemplating bringing your knight forward.
Ferndale smiled at the oblique reference to his knight, the Director General of his service.
... that Castletown would certainly abort if Rudin fell from control at this juncture. And that he
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could use something from Castletown, from your side, to convince any waverers among his faction
that he was achieving things there and that he was the man to back.
Concessions? askedKahn. We got the final analysis of the Soviet grain harvest last week.
Theyre over a barrel. At least thats the way Poklewski put it.
Hes right, said Ferndale. But the barrels on the point of collapsing. And waiting inside it is
dear Comrade Vishnayev, with his war plan. And we all know what that would entail.
Point taken, saidKahn. Actually, my own reading of the combined Nightingale file runs along
very similar lines. Ive got a paper in preparation for the Presidents eyes at the moment. Hell
have it next week when he and Benson meet with Lawrence and Poklewski.
These figures, asked President Matthews, they represent the final aggregate grain crop the
Soviet Union brought in a month ago?
He glanced across at the four men seated in front of his desk. At the far end of the room a log fire
crackled in the marble fireplace, adding a touch of visual warmth to the already
high temperature
assured by the central heating system. Beyond the bulletproof south windows, the sweeping lawns
held their first dusting of November morning frost. Being from the South, William Matthews
appreciated warmth.
Robert Benson and Dr. Myron Fletcher nodded in unison. David Lawrence andStanislaw Poklewski
studied the figures.
All our sources have been called on for these figures, Mr. President, and all our information has
been correlated extremely
carefully, said Benson. We could be out by five percent either way, no
more.
And according to the Nightingale, even the Politburo agrees with us, interposed the Secretary of
State.
One hundred million tons, total, mused the President. Itwill last them till the end of March, with
a lot of belt tightening.

Theyll be slaughtering the cattle by January, said Poklewski.
They have to start making
sweeping concessions at Castletown next month if they want to survive.
The President laid down the Soviet grain report and picked up the presidential briefing prepared by
BenKahn and presented by his Director of Central Intelligence. It had been read by all four in the
room, as well as himself. Benson and Lawrence had agreed with it; Dr. Fletcher was not called upon
for an opinion; the hawkish Poklewski dissented.
We knowand they knowthey are in desperate straits, said Matthews. The question is, how far
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do we push them?
As you said weeks ago, Mr. President, said Lawrence, if we dont push hard enough, we dont
get the best deal we can for America and the free world. Push too hard and we force Rudin to abort
the talks to save himself from his own hawks. Its a question of balance. At this point, I feel we
should make them a gesture.
Wheat?
Animal feed to help them keep some of their herds alive? suggested Benson.
Dr. Fletcher? asked the President.
The man from the Agriculture Department shrugged.
We have the feed available, Mr. President, he said. The Soviets have a large proportion of their
own merchant fleet, Sovfrächt,standing by. We know that because with their subsidized
freight rates
they could all be busy, but theyre not Theyre positioned all over the warm−water ports of the
Black Sea and down the Soviet Pacific coast. Theyll sail for the United States if theyre given the
word from Moscow.
Whats the latest we need to give a decision on this one? asked President Matthews.
New Years Day, said Benson. If they know a respite is coming, they can hold off slaughtering
the herds.
I urge you not to ease up on them, pleaded Poklewski. By March theyll be desperate.
Desperate enough to concede enough disarmament to assure
peace for a decade, or desperate
enough to go to war? asked Matthews rhetorically. Gentlemen, youll have my decision
by
Christmas Day. Unlike you, I have to take five chairmen of Senate subcommittees with me on this
one: Defense,
Agriculture, Foreign Relations, Trade, and Appropriations.
And I cant tell them
about the Nightingale, can I, Bob?
The chief of the CIA shook his head.
No, Mr. President Not about the Nightingale. There are too many Senate aides, too many leaks. The
effect of a leak of what we really know at this juncture could be disastrous.
Very well, then. Christmas Day it is.
On December 15, Professor Ivan Sokolov rose to his feet at Castletown and began to read a prepared
paper. The Soviet Union, he said, ever true to its traditions as a country devoted to the unswerving
search for world peace, and mindful of its often−reiterated commitment to peaceful coexistence ...

Edwin J. Campbell sat across the table and watched his Soviet
opposite number with some fellow
feeling. Over two months, working until fatigue overcame both of them, he had developed a fairly
warm relationship with the man from Moscow
as much, at least, as their positions and their duties
would allow.
In breaks between the talks, each had visited the other in the opposing delegations suite. In the
Soviet drawing room, with the Muscovite delegation present and its inevitable complement
of KGB
agents, the conversation had been agreeable but formal. In the American room, where Sokolov had
arrived
alone, he had relaxed to the point of showing Campbell pictures of his grandchildren on
holiday on the Black Sea coast. As a leading member of the Academy of Sciences, the professor was
rewarded for his loyalty to Party and cause with a limousine, chauffeur, city apartment, country
dacha, seaside chalet, and access to the Academys grocery store and commissary. Campbell had no
illusions but that Sokolov was paid for his loyalty, for his ability to devote his talents to the service
of a regime that committed tens of thousands to the labor camps of Mordovia; that he was one of the
fat cats, thenachalstvo. But even thenachalstvo had grandchildren.
He sat and listened to the Russian with growing surprise.
You poor old man, he thought. What this must be costing you.
When the peroration was over, Edwin Campbell rose and gravely thanked the professor for his
statement, which on behalf
of the United States of America he had listened to with the utmost care
and attention. He moved an adjournment while the U.S. government considered its position. Within
an hour he was in the Dublin embassy to begin transmitting Sokolovs extraordinary speech to
David Lawrence.
Some hours later in Washingtons State Department, David Lawrence lifted one of his telephones
and called President Matthews on his private line.
I have to tell you, Mr. President, that six hours ago in Ireland
the Soviet Union conceded six major
points at issue. They concern total numbers of intercontinental ballistic missileswith hydrogen−bomb
warheads, through conventional armor,
to disengagement of forces along the Elbe River.
Thanks, David, said Matthews. Thats great news. You were right. I think we should let them
have something in return.

The area of birch and larch forest lying southwest of Moscow where the Soviet elite have their
country dachas covers little more than a hundred square miles. They like to stick together.
The roads
in this area are bordered mile after mile by green−painted steel railings, enclosing the private estates
of the men at the very top. The fences and the driveway gates seem largely abandoned, but anyone
trying to scale the first or drive through the second will be intercepted within moments
by guards
who materialize out of the trees.
Lying beyond Uspenskoye Bridge, the area centers on a small village called Zhukovka, usually
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known as Zhukovka Village. This is because there are two other and newer settlements
nearby:
Sovmin Zhukovka, where the Party hierarchs have their weekend villas; and Akademik Zhukovka,
which groups the writers, artists, musicians, and scientists who have found favor in Party eyes.
But across the river lies the ultimate, the even more exclusive,
settlement of Usovo. Nearby, the
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Chairman of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet, the Politburo, retires to a sumptuous mansion set in hundreds of acres of rigorously
guarded forest.
Here on the night before Christmas, a feast he had not recognized in more than fifty years, Maxim
Rudin sat in his favorite button−back leather chair, feet toward the enormous fireplace in rough−cut
granite blocks where meter−long logs of split pine crackled. It was the same fireplace that had
warmed Leonid Brezhnev and Nikita Khrushchev before him.
The bright yellow glare of the flames flickered on the paneled
walls of the study and illuminated the
face of Vassili Petrov, who faced him across the fire. By Rudins chair arm, a small coffee table
held an ashtray and half a tumbler of Armenian
brandy, which Petrov eyed askance. He knew his
aging
protector was not supposed to drink. Rudins inevitable cigarette was clipped between first
finger and thumb.
What news of the investigation? asked Rudin.
Slow, said Petrov. That there was outside help is beyond doubt. We now know the night−sight
was bought commercially
in New York. The Finnish rifle was one of a consignment exported from
Helsinki to Britain. We dont know which shop it came from, but the export order was for sporting
rifles; therefore it was a private−sector commercial order, not an official one.
The footprints at the building site have been checked out against the boots of all the workers at the
place, and there are two sets of footprints that cannot be traced. There was damp in the air that night
and a lot of cement dust lying around, so the prints are clear. We are reasonably certain there were
two men.
Dissidents? asked Rudin.
Almost certainly. And quite mad.
No, Vassili, keep that for the Party meetings. Madmen take potshots, or sacrifice themselves. This
was planned over months by someone. Someone out there, inside or outside Russia, who has got to
be silenced, once and for all, with his secret untold. Whom are you concentrating on?
The Ukrainians, said Petrov. We have all their groups in Germany, Britain, and America
completely penetrated. No one has heard a rumor of such a plan. Personally, I still think they are in
the Ukraine. That Ivanenkos mother was used as bait is undeniable. So who would have known
shewas Ivanenkos mother? Not some slogan−dauber in New York. Not some armchair nationalist
in Frankfurt. Not some pamphleteer
in London. Someone local, with contacts outside. We are
concentrating on Kiev. Several hundred former detainees who were released and returned to the Kiev
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area are under interrogation.
Find them, Vassili, find them and silence them. Maxim Rudin changed the subject, as he had a
habit of doing without
a change of tone. Anything new from Ireland?
The Americans have resumed talking but have not responded
to our initiative, said Petrov.
Rudin snorted. That Matthews is a fool. How much further
does he think we can go before we
have to pull back?
He has those Soviet−hating senators to contend with, said Petrov, and that Catholic fascist
Poklewski. And of course he cannot know how close things are for us inside the Politburo.

Rudin grunted. If he doesnt offer us something by the New Year, we wont carry the Politburo in
the first week of January.
He reached out and took a draft of brandy, exhaling with a satisfied sigh.
Are you sure you should be drinking? asked Petrov. The doctors forbade you five years ago.
To hell with the doctors, said Rudin. Thats what I really
called you here for. I can inform you
beyond any doubt that I am not going to die of alcoholism or liver failure.
Im glad to hear it, said Petrov.
Theres more. On April thirtieth I am going to retire. Does that surprise you?
Petrov sat motionless, alert. He had twice seen the supremos
go down. Khrushchev in flames,
ousted and disgraced, to become a nonperson. Brezhnev on his own terms. He had been close enough
to feel the thunder when the most powerful
tyrant in the world gives way to another. But never this
close. This time he wore the mantle unless others could snatch it from him.
Yes, he said carefully, it does.
In April I am calling a meeting of the full Central Committee,
 said Rudin. To announce to them
my decision to go on April thirtieth. On May Day there will be a new leader at the center of the line
on the Mausoleum. I want it to be you. In June the plenary Party Congress is due. The leader will
outline the policy from then on. I want it to be you. I told you that weeks ago.
Petrov knew he was Rudins choice, since that meeting in the old leaders private suite in the
Kremlin when the dead Ivanenko had been with them, cynical and watchful as ever. But he had not
known it would be so fast.
I wont get the Central Committee to accept your nomination
unless I can give them something
they want. Grain. Theyve all known the position for a long time. If Castletown fails, Vishnayev
will have it all.
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Why so soon? asked Petrov.
Rudin held up his glass. From the shadows the silent Misha appeared and poured brandy into it.
I got the results of the tests from Kuntsevo yesterday, said Rudin. Theyve been working on
tests for months. Now theyre certain. Not cigarettes and not Armenian brandy. Leukemia. Six to
twelve months. Lets just say I wont see a Christmas after this one. And if we have a nuclear war,
neither
will you.
In the next hundred days we have to secure a grain agreement
from the Americans and wipe out
the Ivanenko affair once and for all time. The sands are running out, and too damn fast. The cards are
on the table, face up, and there are no more aces to play.
On December 28, the United States formally offered the Soviet
Union a sale, for immediate delivery
and at commercial rates, of ten million tons of animal feed grains, to be considered
as being outside
any terms still being negotiated at Castletown.
On New Years Eve, an Aeroflot twin−jet Tupolev−134 took off from Lvov airport, bound for
Minsk on an internal flight. Just north of the border between the Ukraine and White Russia,
high
over the Pripet Marshes, a nervous−looking young man rose from his seat and approached the
stewardess, who was several rows back from the steel door leading to the flight deck, speaking with
a passenger.
Knowing the toilets were at the other end of the cabin, she straightened as the young man
approached her. As she did so, the young man spun her around, clamped his left forearm across her
throat, drew a handgun, and jammed it into her ribs. She screamed. There was a chorus of shouts and
yells from the passengers. The hijacker began to drag the girl backward to the locked door to the
flight deck. On the bulkhead
next to the door was the intercom enabling the stewardess
to speak to
the flight crew, who had orders to refuse to open the door in the event of a hijack.
From midway down the fuselage, one of the passengers rose, automatic in hand. He crouched in the
aisle, both hands clasped around his gun, pointing it straight at the stewardess and the hijacker
behind her.
Hold it! he shouted. KGB. Hold it right there.
Tell them to open the door, yelled the hijacker.
Not a chance! shouted the armed flight guard from the KGB back to the hijacker.
If they dont, Ill kill the girl, screamed the man holding the stewardess.
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The girl had a lot of courage. She lunged backward with her heel, caught the gunman in the shin,
broke his grip, and made to run toward the police agent. The hijacker sprang after
her, passing three
rows of passengers. It was a mistake. From an aisle seat, one of them rose, turned, and slammed a
fist into the nape of the hijackers neck. The man fell, face downward; before he could move, his
assailant had snatched the mans gun and was pointing it at him. The hijacker turned, sat up, looked
at the gun, put his face in his hands, and began to moan softly.
From the rear the KGB agent stepped past the stewardess, gun still at the ready, and approached the
rescuer.
Who are you? he asked. For answer, the rescuer reached into an inside pocket, produced a card,
and flicked it open.
The agent looked at the KGB card.
Youre not from Lvov, he said.
Ternopol, said the other. I was going home on leave in Minsk, so I had no sidearm. But I have a
good right fist. He grinned.
The agent from Lvov nodded.
Thanks, Comrade. Keep him covered. He stepped to the intercom and talked rapidly into it. He
was relating what had happened and asking for a police escort at Minsk.
Is it safe to have a look? asked a metallic voice from behind
the door.
Sure, said the KGB agent. Hes safe enough now.
There was a clicking behind the door, and it opened to show the head of the engineer, somewhat
frightened and intensely
curious.
The agent from Ternopol acted very strangely. He turned from the man on the floor, crashed the
revolver into the base of his colleagues skull, shoved him aside, and thrust his foot in the space
between the door and jamb before it could close. In a second he was through it, pushing the engineer
backward onto the flight deck. The man on the floor behind him rose, grabbed the flight guards
own automatic, a standard KGB Tokarev nine−millimeter, followed through the steel door, and
slammed it behind him. It locked automatically.
Two minutes later, under the guns of David Lazareff and Lev Mishkin, the Tupolev turned due west
for Warsaw and Berlin, the latter being the ultimate limit of their fuel supply. At the controls Captain
Mikhail Rudenko sat white−faced with rage; beside him his copilot, Sergei Vatutin, slowly
answered
the frantic requests from the Minsk control tower regarding
the change of course.
By the time the airliner had crossed the border into Polish airspace, Minsk tower and four other
airliners on the same wavelength knew the Tupolev was in the hands of hijackers.
When it bored
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clean through the center of Warsaws air−traffic−control zone, Moscow already knew. A hundred
miles west of Warsaw, a flight of six Polish−based Soviet MIG−23 fighters swept in from starboard
and formatted on the Tupolev. The flight leader was jabbering rapidly into his mask.
At his desk in the Defense Ministry on Frunze Street, Moscow,
Marshal Nikolai Kerensky took an
urgent call on the line linking him to Soviet Air Force headquarters.
Where? he barked.
Passing overPoznán, wasthe answer. Three hundred kilometers to Berlin. Fifty minutes flying
time.
The marshal considered carefully. This could be the scandal
that Vishnayev had demanded. There
was no doubt what should be done. The Tupolev should be shot down, with its entire passenger and
crew complement. Later the version given out would be that the hijackers had fired within the
fuselage, hitting a main fuel tank. It had happened twice in the past decade.
He gave his orders. A hundred meters off the airliners wing tip, the commander of the MIG flight
listened five minutes later.
If you say so, Comrade Colonel, he told his base commander.
Twenty minutes later, the airliner
passed across the Oder−Niesse Line and began its descent into Berlin. As it did so, the MIGs peeled
gracefully away and slipped down the sky toward their home base.
I have to tell Berlin were coming in, Captain Rudenko appealed to Mishkin. If theres a plane
on the runway, well end up as a ball of fire.
Mishkin stared ahead at the banks of steel−gray winter clouds. He had never been in an airplane
before, but what the captain said made sense.
Very well, he said, break silence and tellTempelhof you are coming in. No requests, just a flat
statement.
Captain Rudenko was playing his last card. He leaned forward,
adjusted the channel selection dial,
and began to speak.
Tempelhof,West Berlin.Tempelhof, West Berlin. This is Aeroflot flight three−five−one. ...
He was speaking in English, the international language of air traffic control. Mishkin and Lazareff
knew almost none of it, apart from what they had picked up on broadcasts in Ukrainian from the
West. Mishkin jabbed his gun into Rudenkos neck.
No tricks, he said in Ukrainian.
In the control tower at East BerlinsSchönefeld Airport, the two controllers looked at each other in
amazement. They were being called on their own frequency but being addressed asTempelhof. No
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Aeroflot plane would dream of landing in West Berlinapart from which,Tempelhof had not been
West Berlins civil airport for ten years.Tempelhof had reverted
to a U.S. Air Force base when
Tegel took over as the civil airport. One ofthe East Germans, faster than the other, snatched the
microphone.
Tempelhofto Aeroflot three−five−one, you are cleared to land. Straight run−in, he said. In the
airliner Captain Rudenko swallowed hard and lowered flaps and undercarriage.
The Tupolev let
down rapidly to the main airport of Communist East Germany. They broke cloud at a thousand feet
and saw the landing lights ahead of them. At five hundred feet Mishkin peered suspiciously through
the streaming
perspex. He had heard of West Berlin, of brilliant lights, packed streets, teeming
crowds of shoppers up theKurfürstendamm, andTempelhof Airport right in the heart of it all. This
airport was right out in the countryside.
Its a trick, he yelled at Lazareff, its the East! He jabbed his gun into Captain Rudenkos
neck. Pull out, he screamed, pull out or Ill shoot!
The Ukrainian captain gritted his teeth and held course for the last hundred meters. Mishkin reached
over his shoulder and tried to haul back on the control column. The twin booms, when they came,
were so close together that it was impossible to tell which came first. Mishkin claimed the thump of
the wheels hitting the tarmac caused the gun to go off; copilot Vatutin maintained Mishkin had fired
first. It was too confused for a final and definitive version ever to be established.
The bullet tore a gaping hole in the neck of Captain Rudenko and killed him instantly. There was
blue smoke in the flight deck, Vatutin hauling back on the stick, yelling to his engineer for more
power. The jet engines screamed a mite louder than the passengers as the Tupelov, heavy as a wet
loaf, bounced twice more on the tarmac, then lifted into the air, rolling, struggling for lift. Vatutin
held her, nose high, wallowing, praying for more engine power, as the outer suburbs of East Berlin
blurred past beneath them, followed by the Berlin Wall itself.
When the Tupolev came over the perimeter ofTempelhof, it cleared the nearest houses by six feet.
White−faced, the young copilot hammered the plane onto the main runway with Lazareffs gun in
his back. Mishkin held the red−soaked body of Captain Rudenko from falling across the control
column. The Tupolev finally came to rest three quarters down the runway, still on all its wheels.
Staff SergeantLeroy Coker was a patriotic man. He sat huddled against the cold at the wheel of his
Security Police Jeep, his fur−trimmed parka drawn tight around the edges of his face, and he thought
longingly of the warmth of Alabama.
But he was on guard duty, and he took it seriously.
When the incoming airliner lurched over the houses beyond
the perimeter fence, engines howling,
undercarriage and flaps hanging, he let out a What the sheee−yit! and sat bolt upright. He had
never been to Russia, nor even across to the East, but he had read all about them over there. He did
not know much about the Cold War, but he well knew that an attack
by the Communists was always
imminent unless men likeLeroy Coker kept on their guard. He also knew a red star when he saw one,
and a hammer and sickle.
TheDevil'sAlternative
CHAPTER EIGHT 142
When the airliner slithered to a stop, he unslung his carbine,
took a bead, and blew the nosewheel
tires out.
Mishkin and Lazareff surrendered three hours later. Their intent had been to keep the crew, release
the passengers, take on board three notables from West Berlin, and be flown to Tel Aviv. But a new
nosewheel for a Tupolev was out of the question; the Russians would never supply one. And when
the news of the killing of Rudenko was made known to the USAF base authorities, they refused to
supply a plane of their own. Marksmen ringed the Tupolev; there was no way the two men could
herd the others, even at gunpoint, to an alternative aircraft. The sharpshooters would have cut them
down. After an hours talk with the base commander, they walked out with their hands in the air.
That night, they were formally handed over to the West Berlin authorities for imprisonment and trial.