by Tom Clancy
“And therefore you do not know about the attack on our Project Bright Star?”
“What?” Jack was very surprised, and showed it.
“Don’t insult me, Ryan. You do know the name.”
“It’s southeast of Dushanbe. I know it. Attacked?” he asked.
“As I thought. You know that was an act of war,” Narmonov observed.
“Sir, KGB officers kidnapped an American SDI scientist several days ago. That was ordered by Gerasimov himself. His name is Alan Gregory. He’s a major in the U.S. Army, and he was rescued.”
“I don’t believe it,” Golovko said before translating. Narmonov was annoyed by the interruption, but shocked by the substance of Ryan’s statement.
“One of your officers was captured. He’s alive. It is true, sir,” Jack assured him.
Narmonov shook his head and rose to toss another log on the fire. He maneuvered it into place with a poker. “It’s madness, you know,” he said at the hearth. “We have a perfectly satisfactory situation now.”
“Excuse me? I don’t understand,” Ryan asked.
“The world is stable, is it not? Yet your country wishes to change this, and forces us to pursue the same goal.” That the ABM test site at Sary Shagan had been operating for over thirty years was, for the moment, beside the point.
“Mr. Secretary, if you think the ability to turn every city, every home in my country into a fire like the one you have right there—”
“My country, too, Ryan,” Narmonov said.
“Yes, sir, your country, too, and a bunch of others. You can kill most every civilian in my country, and we can murder almost every person in your country, in sixty minutes or less from the time you pick up the phone—or my President does. And what do we call that? We call it ‘stability.’ ”
“It is stability, Ryan,” Narmonov said.
“No, sir, the technical name we use is MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction, which isn’t even good grammar, but it’s accurate enough. The situation we have now is mad, all right, and the fact that supposedly intelligent people have thought it up doesn’t make it any more sensible.”
“It works, doesn’t it?”
“Sir, why is it stabilizing to have several hundred million people less than an hour away from death? Why do we view weapons that might protect those people to be dangerous? Isn’t that backwards?”
“But if we never use them . . . Do you think that I could live with such a crime on my conscience?”
“No, I don’t think that any man could, but someone might screw up. He’d probably blow his brains out a week after the fact, but that might be a little late for the rest of us. The damned things are just too easy to use. You push a button, and they go, and they’ll work, probably, because there’s nothing to stop them. Unless something stands in their way, there’s no reason to think that they won’t work. And as long as somebody thinks they might work, it’s too easy to use them.”
“Be realistic, Ryan. Do you think that we’ll ever rid ourselves of atomic arms?” Narmonov asked.
“No, we’ll never get rid of all the weapons. I know that. We’ll both always have the ability to hurt each other badly, but we can make that process more complicated than it is now. We can give everybody one more reason not to push the button. That’s not destabilizing, sir. That’s just good sense. That’s just something more to protect your conscience.”
“You sound like your President.” This was delivered with a smile.
“He’s right.” Ryan returned it.
“It is bad enough that I must argue with one American. I will not do so with another. What will you do with Gerasimov?” the General Secretary asked.
“It will be handled very quietly, for the obvious reason,” Jack said, hoping that he was right.
“It would be very damaging to my government if his defection became public. I suggest that he died in a plane crash . . .”
“I will convey that to my government if I am permitted to do so. We can also keep Filitov’s name out of the news. We have nothing to gain by publicity. That would just complicate things for your country and mine. We both want the arms treaty to go forward—all that money to save, for both of us.”
“Not so much,” Narmonov said. “A few percentage points of the defense budgets on both sides.”
“There is a saying in our government, sir. A billion here and a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about some real money.” That earned Jack a laugh. “May I ask a question, sir?”
“Go on.”
“What will you do with the money on your side? I’m supposed to figure that one out.”
“Then perhaps you can offer me suggestions. What makes you think that I know?” Narmonov asked. He rose, and Ryan did the same. “Back to your embassy. Tell your people that it is better for both sides if this never becomes public.”
Half an hour later Ryan was dropped off at the front door of the embassy. The first one to see him was a Marine sergeant. The second was Candela.
The VC-137 landed at Shannon ten minutes late, due to headwinds over the North Sea. The crew chief and another sergeant herded the passengers out the front way, and when all had left the aircraft, came back to open the rear door. While cameras flashed in the main terminal, steps were rolled to the Boeing’s tail and four men left wearing the uniform parkas of U.S. Air Force sergeants. They entered a car and were driven to a far end of the terminal, where they boarded another plane of the 89th Military Airlift Wing, a VC-20A, the military version of the Gulfstream-III executive jet.
“Hello, Misha.” Mary Pat Foley met him at the door and took him forward. She hadn’t kissed him before. She made up for it now. “We have food and drink, and another plane ride home. Come, Misha.” She took his arm and led him to his seat.
A few feet away, Robert Ritter greeted Gerasimov.
“My family?” the latter asked.
“Safe. We’ll have them in Washington in two days. At this moment they are aboard a U.S. Navy ship in international waters.”
“I am supposed to thank you?”
“We expect you to cooperate.”
“You were very lucky,” Gerasimov observed.
“Yes,” Ritter agreed. “We were.”
The embassy car drove Ryan to Sheremetyevo the following day to catch the regular Pan Am 727 flight to Frankfurt. The ticket they provided him was tourist, but Ryan upgraded it to first class. Three hours later he connected with a 747 for Dulles, also Pan Am. He slept most of the way.
Bondarenko surveyed the carnage. The Afghans had left forty-seven bodies behind, with evidence of plenty more. Only two of the site’s laser assemblies had survived. All of the machine shops were wrecked, along with the theater and bachelor quarters. The hospital was largely intact, and full of wounded people. The good news was that he’d saved three-quarters of the scientific and engineering personnel and nearly all of their dependents. Four general officers were there already to tell him what a hero he was, promising medals and promotion, but he’d already gotten the only reward that mattered. As soon as the relief force had arrived, he’d seen that the people were safe. Now, he just looked from the roof of the apartment block.
“There is much work to do,” a voice noted. The Colonel, soon to be a General, turned.
“Morozov. We still have two of the lasers. We can rebuild the shops and laboratories. A year, perhaps eighteen months.”
“That’s about right,” the young engineer said. “The new mirrors and their computer control equipment will take at least that long. Comrade Colonel, the people have asked me to—”
“That is my job, Comrade Engineer, and I had my own ass to save, remember? This will never happen again. We’ll have a battalion of motorized infantry here from now on, from a guards regiment. I’ve already seen to that. By summer this installation will be as safe as any place in the Soviet Union.”
“Safe? What does that mean, Colonel?”
“That is my new job. And yours,” Bondarenko said. “Remember?”
Epilogue:
Common Ground
IT didn’t surprise Ortiz when the Major came in alone. The report of the battle took an hour, and again the CIA officer was given a few rucksacks of equipment. The Archer’s band had fought its way out, and of the nearly two hundred who had left the refugee camp, fewer than fifty returned on this first day of spring. The Major went immediately to work making contact with other bands, and the prestige of the mission which his group had carried out enabled him to deal with older and more powerful chieftains as a near equal. Within a week he had made good his losses with eager new warriors, and the arrangement the Archer had made with Ortiz remained in force.
“You’re going back already?” the CIA officer asked the new leader.
“Of course. We’re winning now,” the Major said with a degree of confidence that even he did not understand.
Ortiz watched them leave at nightfall, a single file of small, ferocious warriors, led now by a trained soldier. He hoped it would make a difference.
Gerasimov and Filitov never saw each other again. The debriefings lasted for weeks, and were conducted at separate locations. Filitov was taken to Camp Peary, Virginia, where he met a spectacled U.S. Army major and told what he remembered of the Russian breakthrough in laser power. It seemed curious to the old man that this boy could be so excited about things that he’d memorized but never fully understood.
After that came the routine explanations of the second career that had joined and paralleled his first. A whole generation of field officers visited him for meals and walks, and drinking sessions that worried the doctors but which no one could deny the Cardinal. His living quarters were closely guarded, and even bugged. Those who listened to him were surprised that he occasionally spoke in his sleep.
One CIA officer who was six months from his retirement paused from reading the local paper when it happened again. He smiled at the noise in his headphones and set down the article he was reading about the President’s visit to Moscow. That sad, lonely old man, he thought as he listened. Most of his friends dead, and he only sees them in his sleep. Was that why he went to work for us? The murmuring stopped, and in the quarters next door, the Cardinal’s baby-sitter went back to his paper.
“Comrade Captain,” Romanov said.
“Yes, Corporal?” It seemed more real than most of his dreams, Misha noted. A moment later he knew why.
They were spending their honeymoon under the protection of security officers, all four days of it—which was as long as Al and Candi were willing to stay away from work. Major Gregory got the phone when it rang.
“Yeah—I mean, yes, sir,” Candi heard him say. A sigh. A shake of the head in the darkness. “Not even anyplace to send flowers, is there? Can Candi and I—Oh ... I understand. Thanks for calling, General.” She heard him replace the phone and let out another breath.
“Candi, you awake?”
“Yeah.”
“Our first kid, his name’s going to be Mike.”
Major General Grigoriy Dalmatov’s post of Defense Attache at the Soviet Embassy in Washington carried a number of ceremonial duties that conflicted with his primary mission, intelligence gathering. He was slightly annoyed when the telephone call from the Pentagon had come, asking him to drive over to the American military headquarters—and to his great surprise, to do so in full uniform. His car dropped him off at the River entrance, and a young paratroop captain had escorted him inside, then to the office of General Ben Crofter, Chief of Staff, United States Army.
“May I ask what is going on?”
“Something that we thought you should see, Grigoriy,” Crofter answered cryptically. They walked across the building to the Pentagon’s own helicopter pad, where to Dalmatov’s astonishment they boarded a Marine helicopter of the Presidential Fleet. The Sikorsky lifted off at once, heading northwest into the Maryland hills. Twenty minutes later they were descending. Dalmatov’s mind registered yet another surprise. The helicopter was landing at Camp David. A member of the Marine guard force in dress blues saluted at the foot of the stairs as they left the aircraft and escorted them into the trees. Several minutes later they came to a clearing. Dalmatov hadn’t known there were birch trees here, perhaps half an acre of them, and the clearing was near a hilltop that offered a fine view of the surrounding country.
And there was a rectangular hole in the ground, exactly six feet deep. It seemed strange that there was no headstone, and that the sod had been carefully cut and set aside for replacement.
Around the scene, Dalmatov could make out more Marines in the treeline. These wore camouflage fatigues and pistol belts. Well, it was no particular surprise that there was heavy security here, and the General found it rather comforting that in the past hour one unsurprising thing had taken place.
A jeep appeared first. Two Marines—in dress blues again—got out and erected a prefabricated stand around the hole. They must have practiced, the General thought, since it took them only three minutes by his watch. Then a three-quarter-ton truck came through the trees, followed by some more jeeps. Cradled in the back of the truck was a polished oak coffin. The truck pulled to within a few meters of the hole and stopped. An honor guard assembled.
“May I ask why I am here?” Dalmatov asked when he couldn’t stand it any longer.
“You came up in tanks, right?”
“Yes, General Crofter, as did you.”
“That’s why.”
The six men of the honor guard set the coffin on the stand. The gunnery sergeant in command of the detail removed the lid. Crofter walked toward it. Dalmatov gasped when he saw who was inside.
“Misha.”
“I thought you knew him,” a new voice said. Dalmatov spun around.
“You are Ryan.” Others were there, Ritter of CIA, General Parks, and a young couple, in their thirties, Dalmatov thought. The wife seemed to be pregnant, though rather early along. She was weeping silently in the gentle spring breeze.
“Yes, sir.”
The Russian gestured to the coffin. “Where—how did you—”
“I just flew back from Moscow. The General Secretary was kind enough to give me the Colonel’s uniform and decorations. He said that—he said that in the case of this man, he prefers to remember the reason he got those three gold stars. We hope that you will tell your people that Colonel Mikhail Semyonovich Filitov, three times Hero of the Soviet Union, died peacefully in his sleep.”
Dalmatov went red. “He was a traitor to his country—I will not stand here and—”
“General,” Ryan said harshly, “it should be clear that your General Secretary does not agree with that sentiment. That man may be a greater hero than you know, for your country and for mine. Tell me, General, how many battles have you fought? How many wounds have you received for your country? Can you really look at that man and call him traitor? In any case ...” Ryan gestured to the sergeant, who closed the coffin. When he’d finished, another Marine draped a Soviet flag over it. A team of riflemen appeared and formed at the head of the grave. Ryan took a paper from his pocket and read off Misha’s citations for bravery. The riflemen brought up their weapons and fired off their volleys. A trumpeter played Taps.
Dalmatov came to rigid attention and saluted. It seemed a pity to Ryan that the ceremony had to be secret, but its simplicity made for dignity, and that at least was fitting enough.
“Why here?” Dalmatov asked when it was finished.
“I would have preferred Arlington, but then someone might notice. Right over those hills is the Antietam battlefield. On the bloodiest day in our Civil War, the Union forces repelled Lee’s first invasion of the North after a desperate battle. It just seemed like the right place,” Ryan said. “If a hero must have an unmarked grave, it should at least be close to where his comrades fell.”
“Comrades?”
“One way or another we all fight for the things we believe in. Doesn’t that give us some common ground?” Jack asked. He walked off to his car, leaving
Dalmatov with the thought.