by Ian Slater
“Yes, Colonel?” said the premier encouragingly, struck by the officer’s fearlessness in the presence of so much top brass.
“Mr. Premier,” began Marchenko, “I suggest that the Far Eastern Fleet be authorized to carry out AIRTAC exercises in the South China Sea, supported by amphibious elements from our base at Cam Rahn Bay. This would be enough of a departure from normal Far Eastern Fleet maneuvers to give a clear signal to the Americans but still be part of the usual exercises so that it should not unduly alarm Washington. It would also be far enough south of Korea not to be viewed by the Americans as Moscow interfering with Korea. It would also mean our fleet would be strategically positioned between the offshore China islands and Taiwan to signal the opportunist generals in Taipei, very clearly, that we will not tolerate an attack upon Mainland Chinese territory which would further destabilize our Far Eastern border situation. This would also put us in Beijing’s favor and may reduce tensions on the Far Eastern border itself.”
Premier Suzlov nodded, pondering the suggestion. “A double play?” he said, using an American baseball expression he had picked up years before during his stint as KGB head of station in Washington. Suzlov turned to the Politburo. “Well—?” his gaze resting on the ranking minister of defense. “Ilya?”
“Yes,” said the Georgian, “but we must still be seen supporting Pyongyang. Not to do so will only encourage the Americans to become further involved. They already have reservists en route from Japan. The problem will only—”
“A volunteer force,” cut in Marchenko. “From all socialist countries. We could fly them out from Berlin.” The STAVKA colonel realized this time he’d not only spoken out of turn but jumped the gun, butting in on the defense minister’s response. But, as the British said, “In for a penny, in for a pound.” “Dobrovol’tsy”— “Volunteers,” he continued, “from all socialist countries would absolve Moscow of any direct intervention, yet we would all be aiding our North Korean comrades.” Suzlov looked quickly about the room as Marchenko added, “Socialist solidarity.” It was heartfelt for the colonel, no mere slogan. He hated America — a “mongrel mix of races,” he called it, his father, an adviser in North Vietnam, killed by the American Division outside Khe Sahn.
The defense minister turned toward Suzlov, unable to decide whether the upstart colonel deserved a damned quick put-down or a promotion. Never would have happened before Gorbachev, of course. Gorbachev was the one who had encouraged this kind of “spontaneous” exhibitionism the colonel was indulging in. Still, the defense minister saw the colonel’s point was supporting his. “Where,” the defense minister asked Marchenko, “would you get these volunteers from?”
“Cuba. East Germany—” Marchenko paused. “We were still able to get volunteers for SPETSNAZ for Afghanistan—”
“Afghanistan was a mistake,” said the air marshal. It was the party line; it had also cost the air marshal many pilots and put pay once and for all to the idea, as the Americans had learned in Vietnam, that air superiority alone could decide a war. Unless you dropped atomic bombs.
“Yes,” agreed Premier Suzlov, “but the colonel is correct. We did get volunteers despite the unpopularity of the war. And for SPETSNAZ.” He was referring to the toughest, most hazardous duty of all, the special forces.
“And,” said the colonel, pausing, a little more cautious, “we could offer some kind of inducement. Recognition by the state.” He meant bonuses, of course. Cash, coupons for the specialty stores normally open only to the Party.
Suzlov saw the heads nodding. Lenin would have understood perfectly. He was no fool, this colonel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The moment NATO HQ in Brussels had heard that the North Korean army had crossed the DMZ, all units along the NATO front, from Jutland in the north to Austria in the south, went from normal “alert” status to “military vigilance.” If the Soviet-Warsaw Pact armies were to invade the West, there were three “most probable” points of entry. The first was the Fulda Gap. Here the end of the barbed wire East German funnel thrust into West Germany between Mount Fichtel Gebirge in the south and the Harz Mountains in the north, where Hitler had used thousands of SS-controlled slave laborers to build the V-2 rockets in the deep underground tunnels near Nordhausen. The second probable point of attack was in the far south near Burghausen on the Austrian-West German border, where tanks could race through the Hof Corridor, utilizing the plain about the Danube northeast of Munich. The third most probable point of entry was in the far north along the Elbe on the North German Plain. Here attacking forces would almost certainly try to isolate Jutland while racing to Hamburg and Bremerhaven to cut off the vital ports needed by NATO for the massive U.S. reinforcements, which after one week of war would have to start pouring in if NATO was to have any hope of stopping the Soviet-Warsaw Pact juggernaut.
It was clearly understood, as laid out in the UN Charter, that an attack on any of the sixteen NATO signatories would be considered by the United States as an attack upon it. It was possible, of course, that the Soviet-Warsaw Pact forces could attack all three points at once. This was considered highly unlikely, however, as even with the Soviets’ overwhelming numerical advantage of forty thousand main battle tanks against NATO’s twenty thousand, six combat soldiers to NATO’s one, it would mean the S-WP splitting their forces against the numerically inferior but mechanically superior NATO armor.
In Fulda Gap, fifty kilometers northeast of Fulda on the central German front, stood “Tower Alfa,” NATO’s forwardmost observation post along the “trace,” the fifty-yard-wide DMZ that stretched for 550 miles, separating the two Germanys. Here the Americans of the U.S. Fifth Army’s Blackstone Regiment had the responsibility of guarding the fifteen miles of the arrowhead-shaped sector.
Not far back from the tower, in the platoon hut, they had been through the routine quite literally a thousand times, snatching up rifles on the double, the white and turquoise walls of the hut a blur as they raced out to man the machine-gun posts and the M-1s, never knowing when the choking “horn” sounding the jump from normal “alert” to “military vigilance” to “reinforced alert” and finally to “general alert” meant a drill or the real thing. But the American’s were always keen no matter how many times they’d been through it, as mindful as Hans Meir, the Wermacht liaison officer serving with them, that if the Russian T-90s came bursting through the Gap, the men at Alfa would be at the point of maximum danger, that a world war might stop or proceed, depending on the swiftness and the bravery of their response. Meir had never forgotten his grandfather telling him how if just one officer, one man, had stood firm on the bridge across the Rhine in that fateful summer of ‘36, World War II might never have begun, Hitler having secretly ordered his men not to proceed if resistance was met. After that, Meir’s grandfather had explained, it was all downhill to Munich.
Being stationed at Alfa, therefore, was an awesome responsibility for young men, and their commander, Lieutenant General Sutherland, never tired of telling them that their greatest danger lay not in the “bean count,” the two-to-one numerical superiority of the Russians and Warsaw Pack armies in men, tanks, and aircraft, a count used to get U.S. congressmen to vote for better, more sophisticated weapons, but in the very dullness of the Alfa routine, the general constantly lecturing them on the need to be ready. When they had heard of the NKA invasion, however, and the continuing debacle of American arms in South Korea, General Sutherland said no more. The sight of their flag burning on jubilant East German television was enough.
For Hans Meir the threat was more pronounced, for while his parents lived in West Germany, in Frankfurt, only seventy miles southwest of the Fulda Gap, his sister, her husband, and two children whom he had never met still lived in East Berlin, a hundred miles northeast of Fulda. Meir knew that if war ever did break out, the vast sea of the Soviet-WP armies would immediately close the lonely, narrow one-hundred-mile-long corridor that ran from West Germany to the “island” of West Berlin. Hunkered down in the
most forward machine-gun post by the lonely, cream-colored watchtower overlooking the pleasant, rolling countryside beyond Fulda Gap, Hans Meir prayed, though he was not sure whether he believed in God or not, that the Korea-Sache— “Korean business,” as they were calling it-would soon be over, that tempers would cool, logic applied. As darkness descended over the “trace,” he saw the lights of East German farms come on like tiny stars in another universe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A long, shiny black Zil swept out of Sheremetyevo Airport in a gray dawn, heading south through the Green Belt before reaching Moscow’s outer ring, passing through the flickering sunlight of the Garden Ring Road, arriving a half hour later in Dzerzhinsky Square outside the Children’s World. The route was a small variation in Director Chernko’s routine, for normally the head of the six-hundred-thousand-man KGB would have been driven either to the front of, or behind, the ocher-colored facade of Number 2 Dzerzhinsky Square. Chernko preferred the older seven-story All-Russian Insurance Company building fronting on Lubyanka Prison rather than the ugly, modern headquarters in the suburbs. Chernko did not intend to make any mistakes, and small changes in his arrival routine were part of his plan to keep any potential assassin off balance. He knew that to confound madmen wanting to kill you was a difficult thing even in the USSR, but there was no point in helping them. Besides, it was a good example to set for those of his agents still in training. Variation in standard procedure was the most difficult thing to imbue a good agent with. After all, they’d been brought up in a world of apparatchiks, “bureaucrats,” for whom conformity to the rigid system was safety. And there was another good reason for obeying strict procedure: Orthodoxy, in terms of chain of command and basic trade craft, was essential if the First Directorate’s one hundred thousand agents abroad were to function with any discipline. But now, summoned home for an “extraordinary” meeting of the Politburo when the Korean War broke while he was attending a high-level USSR-U.S. “peace study group” in Zurich, Chernko knew that if his supposition about what the Politburo meeting would be about was correct, then the agents he wanted now would be the most unorthodox, the most willing to adapt to quickly changing circumstances. Indeed, the first order the tall, ascetic-looking Chernko gave his aide, upon reaching his seventh-floor office, was to bring the files of all operatives in CANUS — Canada and the United States — who had been “disciplined” in the last two years for exceeding their authority and/or violating “operational procedure.” As the major went to “Records” on the fourth floor, Chernko pressed the buzzer for tea. The Swiss could make superb coffee, but their tea — it was as weak as a congressman’s principles. Chernko liked his tea “so dark,” he had told his staff, that “I can fill my fountain pen with it.” When it arrived on a silver salver, he took a cube of hard sugar, placed it between tobacco-stained teeth, and sipped the steaming brew, glad to be home, looking out over the square.
The breezes blowing softly down from the Lenin Hills to the west carried a smell that for Chernko was as nostalgic as watching the shivering leaves of beech in the last golden light. It brought a sense of sadness, of time lost, never to be recovered, of long summer days when he and the other privileged nachalstvo—the “establishment”—enjoyed their cool dachas at Uspenskoye by the Moscow River. Yet as well as nostalgia for the past, the smell of autumn carried with it the feeling of hope-that the Americans would see all the signals; the idea of the volunteer force released by the Politburo and quickly picked up by the Western media; the presence of the Eastern Fleet in the China Sea; the maneuvers off Cam Rahn Bay. “Amphibious maneuvers,” the phrase that had been suggested by Colonel Marchenko, had precisely the right tone, telling the Americans that if the Soviet Union wanted to land on the Korean peninsula in force, it could.
Chernko’s aide returned with the list of agents. There were seventy-three who’d been cited for infractions, the most common being excessively high expense accounts.
“Back when the American President Carter proposed a tax on the two-martini lunch,” Chernko told the major, “it raised more hackles with our Washington head of station than with the capitalists on Wall Street.”
The major said he was surprised by the number of infractions.
“It’s the American air,” Chernko said, half-jokingly. “It encourages rebellion against rules.” The major gave a noncommittal nod. Sipping his tea, Chernko ignored the cases of inflated expense accounts and odd “unadvised” liaisons with street women. Finally he had ticked off fourteen names, eleven men, three women, who had been singled out for uprostit’ delo— “cutting comers”—a phrase that meant that in these cases the agent had, upon encountering unexpected difficulties, violated strict precautionary measures, a series of obsessionally followed multiple checks against entrapment or enemy surveillance.
“These are the ones,” Chernko said. “Arrange special meets,” he instructed the major. “No code transmits. No pouch. By hand. Vancouver the point of entry. Advisories to Toronto and New York.”
“Yes, sir. Special couriers?”
“No. We’ll use our two best Izvestia people to take the instructions. Journalistic cover.” Chernko thought for a minute, picking up another cube of sugar. “Travel pieces—’This Land Is Your Land — East To West.’ That sort of thing.” He saw the major didn’t get the play on words of the popular American folk tune. He toyed with the sugar cube as he looked down the list, tapping the yellow paper. “Vancouver is sister city to Odessa, isn’t it?”
The major was embarrassed — he didn’t know. “Ah — we have a consulate there.”
“Yes, it is,” said Chernko, answering his own question. “Odessa and Vancouver in the fall. A nice travel piece.”
CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, had Montreal and Toronto pretty well bottled up, and the CIA, of course, had New York well covered. But Vancouver was known within the First Directorate as not only an easy entry point to the United States but also as one of the most beautiful cities in North America, which would make the journalist cover more convincing.
“How many agents will be going through?” asked the major. “I’ll start preparing the paperwork.”
Chernko drank his tea until the sugar cube crumbled under the pressure. “None,” he answered the major. “No, we don’t want to start putting in new people now, Major.” He gave an enigmatic smile. “It would upset the CIA!” He glanced up at the clock below the mounted emblem of the gold shield and sword. “I have to meet with the premier in half an hour. Two cars.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the major, picking up the phone to order the cars while deducing that if delivery of the Directorate’s message necessitated the Directorate using two of their top journalist agents in Izvestia and not even entrusting it to top secret code traffic between Moscow and the Soviet Embassy in Washington, then the message must be one of the most important Moscow center had sent in years.
It was.
As the Zil picked up speed across the square, the twin flashing red lights on either side of the Spassky Gate changed to green, the guards coming to attention and saluting. Chernko looked across at the major.
“Major, do you remember Rust?”
The major thought hard — was he one of the agents in place, a sleeper in America — or was it Canada?
“The German hooligan,” said Chernko. “He landed a plane in Red Square. Here!”
“Yes, of course.”
“About this time of morning,” added Chernko as the battered white Volga sedan they were riding in behind the decoy Zil limousine slowed before entering the Kremlin’s sulfur-colored inner sanctum. From here Chernko could see the red star high above the bell tower of Ivan the Great. Chernko allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. “Of course, that hooligan performed a great service to the revolution.”
The major, who prided himself on a photographic memory, was having a bad day. “How is that, Comrade Director?”
“He allowed Gorbachev to fire the minister of defense and his clique, a
ll the old bednyagi—”farts”— in the party, the ones resistant to change.” Chernko saw that another Zil was entering the courtyard. It was Admiral Doldich. All stars and flags. A wonder there wasn’t a brass band.
“And,” Chernko continued, “the hooligan helped Comrade Gorbachev break down opposition to perestroika and opposition to detente with the United States. New openness. Gorbachev and Reagan. A breath of fresh air, you see. Just what we needed.”
The major was nodding; it had indeed been the schastlivoe vremya— “happy time”—for the KGB. “So that now,” Chernko said as the door opened, “we are ready.” He nodded to Doldich. “Morning, Admiral.”
“Comrade Director,” responded the admiral. The navy man would not have made a good agent, Chernko thought — his expectant look, his need for help, was written all over his face. As they walked to the premier’s office the admiral announced forlornly, “The fools have attacked an American frigate.”
“I know,” replied Chernko.” Satellite pictures show it is still burning. Is your fleet steaming south?”
The admiral looked up warily at Chernko. “Your agents can tell you an American frigate is afire, but they miss my whole fleet. How is that?”
Chernko started to smile but saw the admiral wasn’t in a joking mood. “Of course we did not miss it,” he explained. “But I mean have you reduced speed?”