Yashin leveled his palms on the desk, pushed his chair back and stood. “Alexai is quite right. Our eastern defenses are on a constant alert and our missiles are pointed down Peking’s throat. If there is to be war let the Chinese start it, because only then will the Americans ally themselves with us. Let’s have no more talk of preemptive strikes. The KGB will spend more time providing information and less time trying to alter the policies of the Soviet Government. Now you must excuse me, I have an appointment.”
That had been yesterday. Now Rykov sat in his office in the Arbat, pushing the China reports around on the desk and reflecting on the meeting. He had listened to Strygin’s appeasing whine and Yashin’s careful chastisements before; emotionally immune to them, he was neither angry nor dismayed. But the clarity of his own vision made him impatient with them. Yashin had the distraction of his personal vanity and Strygin had his comfortable ambition and his large family of artists and intellectuals. Rykov had none of those dilutions; he was a superior servant of the State because his whole and only dedication was to the State. He had been widowed eight years ago; there were no children; he had no weaknesses for material things, no wish for personal aggrandizement.
It was a time of great trial for the Soviet Union—perils within and without. Russia was encircled by external enemies and these had their allies within the Soviet Union—forces of decadence, flaccid muscles, sagging purpose, the aged weariness of a revolution running down. Viktor Rykov, childless, clear-headed, unsentimental, uncorrupted by bourgeois prejudices, had to protect the nation from all its enemies—that was his duty and that was what his talents best equipped him to do, and he thought dispassionately that the Soviet Union was fortunate to have such a man as Viktor Rykov in these tragic times.
With red ink he underlined items in the China dispatches and scribbled a number beside each underlining and leaned forward to study the result. The decodes had come up from the cipher rooms within the past twenty-four hours; they represented the sum of one day’s intelligence activity by KGB agents and affiliates. Even in clandestine operations the vastness of bureaucracy had to be obliged and everything had to be committed to paper. Some were radio-code receptions, some were dispatches carried openly on paper in diplomatic pouches, some were blowups of films and microdots carried by courier agents, some were clippings and tear sheets from the world press, government publications, transcripts of radio broadcasts by government figures, advance copies of prepared political speeches—espionage relied heavily on the gathering en masse of nonsecret, openly available material. From enough of it came signs of trends, shifts in momentum, changes in attitudes. The first thing a police detective did to find a man was to look him up in the local directory. In intelligence it was the same: the cinematic exploits of cloak-and-dagger spies were the least part of espionage.
Rykov’s red-underlined selections were brief:
1. Peking University. Chan Po-ku has been absent four days and has not appeared at his home during that time. His classes have been taken over by an assistant.
2. Peking. Meeting of State Cabinet scheduled for next week. Scheduled to attend: Chou; Chug Po; Fei Yunt-tse; Shen Yang; Jiou Ssu-kuan; An Tu; Lo Kai-teh; Yuan Tung; Sun Shih. Not scheduled to attend: Hsin Chaohua; Pu She-cheng; Tien Yat; Wu Tse-chao. (Peking Control notation: Those to attend are anti-Soviet; those uninvited are moderates. Fei, Shen, and Jiou are strongly anti-Soviet strategists and have never been invited to a top-level conference before.)
3. Hulun. 17th Chinese People’s Army Hq. Commanding General Lu Tse-shek relieved of his command and retired, age 61, replaced by General Chi Thian, 63.
4. Mongolia. Unidentified important visitor arrived Ulan Bator by plane from Peking. Spirited away incognito by motorcar into the mountains to the east.
5. Peking newspaper, Jenmin Jih Pao. Two-page 12-column biography of General Li Tu-fen, 48, Chinese People’s Air Force commanding nuclear and ICBM complexes along the Mongolian frontier.
6. Reference note from KGB File C-S-PRC-NM 647529710. Dr. Chan Po-ku. Born Chungking 1916, grad Univ. Peking, postgrad work M.I.T., junior staff Peenemünde, staff Dubna, has been instrumental in development of Chinese ICBM program. Now full professor Peking University.
7. Reference note from KGB File C-M-PRC-PA 49786119. Chi Thian. Born Shanghai 1911, joined Communist Party in China in 1927, attended Sixth Congress (1928), survived Long March (1935) and promoted to Major, fought Japanese in Manchukuo, promoted Lt. Col. & Col. (1939, 1944), assumed command of 7th Div. 4th C.P. Army as Lt. Gen. (1953, Korea), promoted to General 1961. (File note from Hanoi Control: General Chi was principally responsible for the Chinese hijacking of Soviet aid to Hanoi in 1967–68 which forced USSR to abandon trans-China rail deliveries, and ship military aid by sea from Vladivostok to Haiphong. Chi is known as a violently partisan anti-Soviet.)
8. Lop Nor. Rail-yard watch: arrivals this week, 16 goods trains, total of 2,317 goods wagons. (File note from review officer: Cf. last week, 11 trains, 1,428 goods wagons.)
9. Siberia regional summary: Chinese espionage in and around installations of the Soviet Far Eastern Armies appears to have increased.
10. Warsaw. Chinese–U.S. talks canceled this week because Ambassador Tai En-yi has been recalled to Peking for instructions.
11. Lanchow. Arrivals by air: three lieutenant-generals, People’s Air Force (biog. summaries attached), with staffs. Arrivals by rail: 2nd, 3rd, 5th Antiaircraft Batteries (surface-to-air missiles), 4th Brigade, 17th CPA Division; support units and infantry; two sealed goods trains; four extended-flatcar trains carrying estimated 240 SAM missiles and 16 large missiles, possibly ICBMs. Departure by rail: 386 civilian engineers and workers, destination Shanghai redeployment depot.
He summoned his aide and Andrei came in chewing on something. Andrei snacked constantly and his waistline showed it.
Rykov said, “Come around here and look over my shoulder.”
“The red markings?”
“Yes. Do you believe in coincidences?”
“Not often.”
“Then tell me what you see.”
“One might suppose the disappearance of the rocket scientist from Peking University and the arrival of the unidentified high-level visitor at Ulan Bator are connected.”
“Why?”
“Just last week we had confirmation they’re beefing up the electronics and ICBM stations in the mountains there.”
“Which leads you to what, Andrei?”
Andrei stepped back and brooded. “I see.”
“Exactly. If they were preparing to launch their nuclear missiles they would want to have the best scientific adviser on hand at the launch site. Hence the apparent movement of Dr. Chan to Mongolia.”
“If the unidentified visitor is Chan.”
“Consider the rest. The Chinese State Cabinet has met twice in the past five months—unprecedented, when you recall the last two times the Cabinet met were in 1966 and 1970. If Peking plans to employ a first-strike ICBM force against us there would be a Cabinet reshuffling to dispense with the moderates, n’est-ce pas? We appear to be witnessing that. There would be a shift of popular emphasis from infantry and armor to air and ICBMs—we see that with the publication of a popular biography of General Li. There would be a shift of frontier commanders, drawing moderates back to the interior and replacing them with rabid anti-Russians, and we see that here with the arrival of Chi Thian at Hulun on the Siberian border. There would be a general increase in movement around nuclear and ICBM installations and we see evidence of that here—items eight and eleven. The recall of Peking’s ambassador to Warsaw could mean any number of things but it’s always possible they mean to prepare him the way the Japanese prepared their ambassador to Washington in December of 1941.”
Andrei said, “Of course there are other possible explanations for all these things.”
“Yes. We need to know more—and quickly.” Rykov swept the dispatches together and stacked them. “Have copies of my underlinings typed up and sent to S
ecretary Kazakov with a note of explanation.”
“Kazakov?”
“Yashin is a disbeliever and Marshal Tsvetnoy believes that in his old age he must act the part of the mellow statesman. If we’re going to persuade the troika the danger is imminent, it has to be done through Kazakov. He’s the only one whose eyes are open.”
“He doesn’t like you very much.”
“I’m not asking him to like me,” Rykov said. He watched Andrei pick up the sheaf of documents and then he said, “Where’s Leon Belsky?”
“Prague, I think. Why?”
“Find him and make contact. Tell him he’s detached from his duties. I want him here as soon as possible. By that I mean not more than twelve hours from now.”
Andrei gave him a look of brooding speculation. “Belsky. What’s he to do with China?”
“Nothing. I’m sending him to America.”
Andrei took a breath. “To Tucson?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not activating the Illegals?”
“We’ll see. For the moment I only intend to alert them. My intuition tells me we may need them without delay; I can’t have half of them off on holiday in Mexico. They’ve been rusting a long time and they’ll need stiffening. Belsky’s the best man for that, and anyhow I’ll want a line opened to Tucson, it’s a nuisance having to work through the Los Angeles rezidentsia and the FBI probably has the thing covered anyway.”
Andrei said, “If the Chinese attack the Soviet Union you’ll want the Illegals to spike America’s guns, is that it?”
“Not exactly,” Rykov said. “You forget your place, Andrei—don’t ask so many questions.”
Before dawn Rykov and Leon Belsky checked through OVIR military control at Moscow’s Sheremetevo Airport and walked out through the passenger gate into the biting wind. They had to duck their fur-hatted heads against it and lean forward as they walked. By the time they climbed the ramp of the jet Rykov’s cheeks and nose were numb with cold and his bad leg was giving him trouble.
They had no luggage other than Rykov’s attaché case. Rykov would be returning to Moscow directly from Siberia and KGB Control in Vladivostok would supply Belsky with his needs for the remainder of his journey.
Belsky made a bundle of his coat and shoved it under the seat. His face had the masked expressionlessness of a mouzhik peasant; he was a study in monochrome—brown suit, brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin. He had a slightly blurred face, the kind people seldom remembered; he reminded everyone of someone met somewhere before. In his own circle he was known as a Hundertpassler—a man of a hundred passports, his origins lost. He was a thoroughgoing professional and in many respects the best man Rykov had: he combined a vividly inventive mind with a totally responsive loyalty to Rykov. You seldom found that combination in a single individual; the imaginative ones were usually the erratic ones, and the dependable ones usually lacked sufficient inventiveness to deal with unanticipated crises. Belsky was a prize—who knew his own worth.
The plane was a regular Aeroflot jetliner but Rykov had commandeered it and they were the only passengers. Snow made streaks along the windows when it took off into the freezing gale and the air turbulence was extreme.
“Of course I want a direct line opened,” Rykov said, “that’s your first job. You’ll find plenty of technical help on the scene; that’s one advantage of having a team this big. It all has to be set up very quickly because we don’t know how soon we’ll need activation. You’ll be talking to most of them—certainly all the cell leaders—separately. Short of an emergency at this end you’ll have to maintain security.”
Belsky studied the list Rykov had taken out of the attaché case, reviewing the litany of photographic ID portraits and introduction procedures and the instructions Rykov had given him on the way to the airport.
Even at eleven thousand meters the plane encountered high jetstream turbulence and Rykov was vaguely aware of it when the pilot banked to starboard and angled south to detour around the weather. After a while, with Belsky still buried in the documents, Rykov dozed off.
He awoke drowsily with daylight and recognized through thin cirrus below the outlines of the Aral Sea. The launch complex of the Baikonur Cosmodrome—it meant the old Amergrad kolkhoz was an hour or two behind them. Rykov thought of the place without emotion.
Belsky said, “Clarification, please. In the event of activation they will have to move fast and there’s a good chance of discovery. If cover is blown, do we continue operations or go to ground?”
“If you’re ordered into activation you’ll have to continue the operation right through to completion no matter what happens.”
“In other words you’re prepared to sacrifice the deep-cover network.”
“It’s not exactly a matter of sacrificing them. We didn’t seed them there to remain in deep cover until they die of old age. They’re to be used, they understand that.”
“I hope they do. They’ve had twenty years to change their minds.”
“That option has never been open to them,” Rykov said. “You may have to stiffen a few spines, of course.”
“And if I have to set an example or two?”
Rykov answered, “Do it.”
They crossed high over the Irtysh River with Mongolia somewhere beyond the clouds to starboard and at noon the liner set down at Tomsk to refuel. When they took off again the weather was clearing and the flight followed the snowy ribbon of the Siberian Railway east across Irkutsk and the frozen surface of Lake Baikal, across the white tangle of the Yablonoi Mountains toward the drifted wastes of far-east Siberia.
Rykov said, “You’ll have to keep the direct line open at all times once you’ve been ordered to activate. It’s always possible a countermand will come down, even up to the last minute.”
“Of course. You sound as if you seriously expect activation.”
“It depends on the Chinese, doesn’t it.”
Belsky said, “We’ve never had a network this big that’s been in place nearly this long. Most of them have children—adolescent and fully grown. It’s going to be sticky.”
“That’s your job, Leon. You know I rely on you.”
The expressionless brown eyes moved vaguely toward him and away again. “Those children are American children, not Russian. They are of no objective importance to us one way or the other, of course, but they are of considerable importance in that their existence has to have a bearing on any decisions made by the parents.”
“The Illegals are there to execute instructions and they know it perfectly well—they know what happens otherwise: to them, to their children, to the relations they left behind in the Soviet Union.” Rykov moved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “I know it isn’t simple, cut-and-dried, but you’ll handle it. I chose you for this because you’re the one man who can be relied on to carry out this assignment without being programmed step by step. Are you worried?”
“Of course I am.” There was no visible sign of it.
“If you weren’t, I’d think less of you.”
It was dark when the jet made its descent at Khabarovsk, seven hundred kilometers due north of the port of Vladivostok. Rykov stood up and shouldered into his ankle-length greatcoat and tugged the earflaps of his hat down snug. “Good-bye, then.”
Belsky kept his seat, only nodding his acknowledgment, and Rykov went out and down the ramp. The tarmac was bitter cold, windswept; the ice surface splintered under his boot soles like eggshells. He followed the lights of the terminal building, a corrugated-metal quonset-type structure. Behind him the big jet turned ponderously on its undercarriage and taxied out to the runway to take off again; it would deposit Belsky at Vladivostok and return in less than two hours to collect Rykov and take him back to Moscow.
He limped forward against the wind, bracing a crooked arm before his face. Siberia. How many thousands had been exiled to these wastes by his signature? The thought distressed him because he was not, after all, inhuman; but the requirements of the p
eople as a whole always took precedence over the requirements of individuals, and Rykov—jailer, extortionist, executioner—was above all the instrument of the State.
But not unwitting. He had devoted his life to protecting the Russian people from their enemies. He seldom agreed with the Presidium line. He frequently used his power to block foolishness from above. He was instrument, but not puppet—never puppet. The survival of a nation was at stake and Rykov had no time to waste on slavish obeisance to those whom circumstances placed in positions superior to his own: his loyalty was to the Soviet Union, not to its rulers of the moment.
… The warmth inside the terminal was sudden and welcome. He checked in at OVIR and went through the turnstile looking for his contact. A small man, myopic and large-headed, came away from the coffee counter and smiled nervously. “Comrade Ivankovitch? Come with me, please?” The small man turned and led him toward a door with a KEEP OUT sign. “My name is Berdachev.”
Rykov grunted.
The door gave way to a corridor—lino floor, yellow-brown government paint, office doors along both walls. The hallway was not heated and the air temperature was well below freezing. Berdachev led him down half the length of the corridor, around a corner into a side hall and into a small office occupied by filing cabinets, a long table, two unshaded lights suspended from the low corrugated ceiling, and two Oriental women. One was stunning; the other was enormously fat.
The fat woman growled, “Shut the door, Berdi, before we all freeze. Hello, Ivan.”
Rykov removed his coat and threw it on a chair. “You don’t look well, Valentia.”
“It’s the winter, I suppose one needs more sun.”
“I want you to lose weight.”
“Fat protects the blood from the cold.”
“You’re too conspicuous,” he said, and glanced at the lithe young woman in yellow silk. Then he turned to face Berdachev at the door and said, “This will be private if you please.”
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