by Tom Clancy
“Andrey Il’ych, I do not know how to begin.” Vaneyev nearly choked on the words, and tears began to stream from his eyes. “It is my daughter ...” He went on for ten fitful minutes.
“And?” Narmonov asked, when it seemed that he’d finally stopped—but as was obvious, there had to be more. There was.
“Alexandrov and Gerasimov, then.” Narmonov leaned back in his chair and stared at the wall. “It took great courage indeed for you to come to me with this, my friend.”
“I cannot let them—even if it means my career, Andrey, I cannot let them stop you now. You have too many things to do, we—you have too many things to change. I must leave. I know that. But you must stay, Andrey. The people need you here if we are to accomplish anything.”
It was noteworthy that he’d said people rather than Party, Narmonov thought. The times really were changing. No. He shook his head. It wasn’t that, not yet. All he had accomplished was to create the atmosphere within which the times might have the possibility of change. Vaneyev was one who understood that the problem was not so much goals as process. Every Politburo member knew—had known for years—the things that needed to be changed. It was the method of change that no one could agree on. It was like turning a ship to a new course, he thought, but knowing that the rudder might break if you did so. Continuing in the same path would allow the ship to plow on into ... what? Where was the Soviet Union heading? They didn’t even know that. But to change course meant risk, and if the rudder broke—if the Party lost its ascendancy—then there would be only chaos. That was a choice that no rational man would wish to face, but it was a choice whose necessity no rational man could deny.
We don’t even know what our country is doing, Narmonov thought to himself. For at least the past eight years all figures on economic performance had been false in one way or another, each compounding itself on the next until the economic forecasts generated by the GOSPLAN bureaucracy were as fictitious as the list of Stalin’s virtues. The ship he commanded was running deeper and deeper into an enveloping fog of lies told by functionaries whose careers would be destroyed by the truth. That was how he spoke of it at the weekly Politburo meetings. Forty years of rosy goals and predictions had merely plotted a course on a meaningless chart. Even the Politburo itself didn’t know the state of the Soviet Union—something the West hardly suspected.
The alternative? That was the rub, wasn’t it? In his darker moments, Narmonov wondered if he or anyone else could really change things. The goal of his entire political life had been to achieve the power that he now held, and only now did he fully understand how circumscribed that power was. All the way up the ladder of his career he’d noted things that had to change, never fully appreciating how difficult that would be. The power he wielded wasn’t the same as Stalin’s had been. His more immediate predecessors had seen to that. Now the Soviet Union wasn’t so much a ship to be guided, as a huge bureaucratic spring that absorbed and dissipated energy and vibrated only to its own inefficient frequency. Unless that changed ... the West was racing into a new industrial age while the Soviet Union still could not feed itself. China was adopting the economic lessons of Japan, and in two generations might become the world’s third economy: a billion people with a strong, driving economy, right on our border, hungry for land, and with a racial hatred of all Russians that could make Hitler’s fascist legions seem like a flock of football hooligans. That was a strategic threat to his country that made the nuclear weapons of America and NATO shrivel to insignificance—and still the Party bureaucracy didn’t see that it had to change or risk being the agent of its own doom!
Someone has to try, and that someone is me.
But in order to try, he first had to survive himself, survive long enough to communicate his vision of national goals, first to the Party, then to the people—or perhaps the other way around? Neither would be easy. The Party had its ways, resistant to change, and the people, the narod, no longer gave a moment’s thought to what the Party and its leader said to them. That was the amusing part. The West—the enemies of his nation—held him in higher esteem than his own countrymen.
And what does that mean? he asked himself. If they are enemies, does their favor mean that I am proceeding on the right path—right for whom? Narmonov wondered if the American President were as lonely as he. But before facing that impossible task, he still had the day-to-day tactical problem of personal survival. Even now, even at the hands of a trusted colleague. Narmonov sighed. It was a very Russian sound.
“So, Ilya, what will you do?” he asked a man who could not commit an act of treason more heinous than his daughter’s.
“I will support you if it means my disgrace. My Svetlana will have to face the consequences of her action.” Vaneyev sat upright and wiped his eyes. He looked like a man about to face a firing squad, assembling his manhood for one last act of defiance.
“I may have to denounce you myself,” Narmonov said.
“I will understand, Andrushka,” Vaneyev replied, his voice laden with dignity.
“I would prefer not to do this. I need you, Ilya. I need your counsel. If I can save your place, I will.”
“I can ask for no more than that.”
It was time to build the man back up. Narmonov stood and walked around his desk to take his friend’s hand. “Whatever they tell you, agree to it without reservation. When the time comes, you will show them what kind of man you are.”
“As will you, Andrey.”
Narmonov walked him to the door. He had another five minutes till his next scheduled appointment. His day was full of economic matters, decisions that came to him because of indecision in men with ministerial rank, seeking him for his blessing as though from the village priest ... As though I don’t have troubles enough, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union told himself. He spent his five minutes counting votes. It should have been easier for him than for his American counterpart—in the Soviet Union only full Politburo members had the right to vote, and there were only thirteen of them—but each man represented a collection of interests, and Narmonov was asking each of them to do things never before contemplated. In the final analysis, power still counted for more than anything else, he told himself, and he could still count on Defense Minister Yazov.
“I think you will like it here,” General Pokryshkin said as they walked the perimeter fence. The KGB guards saluted as they passed, and both men returned the halfhearted gestures. The dogs were gone now, and Gennady thought that a mistake, food problems or no.
“My wife will not,” Bondarenko replied. “She’s followed me from one camp to another for almost twenty years, and finally to Moscow. She likes it there.” He turned to look outside the fence and smiled. Could a man ever tire of this view? But what will my wife say when I tell her this? But it was not often that a Soviet soldier had the chance to make this sort of choice, and she would understand that, wouldn’t she?
“Perhaps general’s stars will change her mind—and we are working to make the place more hospitable. Do you have any idea how hard I had to fight for that? Finally I told them that my engineers were like dancers, and that they had to be happy to perform. I think that Central Committeeman is a devotee of the Bolshoy, and that finally made him understand. That’s when the theater was authorized, and that’s when we started getting decent food trucked in. By next summer the school will be finished, and all the children will be here. Of course”—he laughed—“we’ll have to put up another block of apartments, and the next Bright Star commander will also have to be a schoolmaster.”
“In five years we may not have room for the lasers. Well, you left the highest point for them, I see.”
“Yes, that argument lasted nine months. Just to convince them that we might eventually want to build something more powerful than the one we already have.”
“The real Bright Star,” Bondarenko noted.
“You will build it, Gennady Iosifovich.”
“Yes, Comrade General, I w
ill build it. I will accept the appointment if you still want me.” He turned to survey the terrain again. Someday this will all be mine ...
“Allah’s will,” the Major said with a shrug.
He was getting tired of hearing that. The Archer’s patience and even his faith were being tested by the forced change in plans. The Soviets had been running troops along the valley road on and off for the last thirty-six hours. He’d gotten half his force across when it had begun, then suffered while his men had been divided, each side watching the rolling trucks and personnel carriers and wondering if the Russians would halt and hop out, and climb the hills to find their visitors. There would be a bloody fight if they tried that, and many Russians would die—but he wasn’t here merely to kill Russians. He was here to hurt them in a way that the simple loss of soldiers could never do.
But there was a mountain to climb, and he was now grossly behind schedule, and all the consolation anyone could offer was Allah’s will. Where was Allah when the bombs fell on my wife and daughter? Where was Allah when they took my son away? Where was Allah when the Russians bombed our refugee camp ... ? Why must life be so cruel?
“It is hard to wait, isn’t it?” the Major observed. “Waiting is the hardest thing. The mind has nothing to occupy it, and the questions come.”
“And your questions?”
“When will the war end? There is talk ... but there has been talk for years. I am tired of this war.”
“You spent much of it on the other—”
The Major’s head snapped around. “Do not say that. I have been giving your band information for years! Didn’t your leader tell you this?”
“No. We knew that he was getting something, but—”
“Yes, he was a good man, and he knew that he had to protect me. Do you know how many times I sent my troops on useless patrols so that they’d miss you, how many times I was shot at by my own people—knowing that they wanted to kill me, knowing how they cursed my name?” The sudden flood of emotion amazed both men. “Finally I could bear it no more. Those of my troops who wanted to work for the Russians—well, it was not hard to send them into your ambushes, but I couldn’t merely send those, could I? Do you know, my friend, how many of my troops—my good men—I consigned to death at your hands? Those I had left were loyal to me, and loyal to Allah, and it was time to join the freedom fighters once and for all. May God forgive me for all those who did not live long enough for this.” Each man had his tale to tell, the Archer reflected, and the only consistent thread made but a single sentence:
“Life is hard.”
“It will be harder still for those atop this mountain.” The Major looked around. “The weather is changing. The wind blows from the south now. The clouds will bring moisture with them. Perhaps Allah has not deserted us after all. Perhaps He will let us continue this mission. Perhaps we are His instrument, and He will show them through us that they should leave our country lest we come to visit them.”
The Archer grunted and looked up the mountain. He could no longer see the objective, but that didn’t matter because, unlike the Major, he couldn’t see the end to the war either.
“We’ll bring the rest across tonight.”
“Yes. They will all be well rested, my friend.”
“Mr. Clark?” He’d been on the treadmill for nearly an hour. Mancuso could tell from the sweat when he flipped the off switch.
“Yes, Captain?” Clark took off the headphones.
“What sort of music?”
“That sonar kid, Jones, lent me his machine. All he has is Bach, but it does keep the brain occupied.”
“Message for you.” Mancuso handed it over. The slip of paper merely had six words. They were code words, had to be, since they didn’t actually mean anything.
“It’s a go.”
“When?”
“It doesn’t say that. That’ll be the next message.”
“I think it’s time you tell me how this thing goes,” the Captain observed.
“Not here,” Clark said quietly.
“My stateroom is this way.” Mancuso waved. They went forward past the submarine turbine engines, then through the reactor compartment with its annoyingly noisy door, and finally through the Attack Center and into Mancuso’s cabin. It was about as far as anyone could walk on a submarine. The Captain tossed Clark a towel to wipe the sweat from his face.
“I hope you didn’t wear yourself out,” he said.
“It’s the boredom. All your people have jobs to do. Me, I just sit around and wait. Waiting is a bitch. Where’s Captain Ramius?”
“Asleep. He doesn’t have to be in on the thing this soon, does he?”
“No,” Clark agreed.
“What exactly is the job? Can you tell me now?”
“I’m bringing two people out,” Clark replied simply.
“Two Russians? You’re not picking up a thing? Two people?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re going to say that you do it all the time?” Mancuso asked.
“Not exactly all the time,” Clark admitted. “I did one three years ago, another one a year before that. Two others never came off, and I never found out why. ⊂Need-to-know,⊃ you know.”
“I’ve heard the phrase before.”
“It’s funny,” Clark mused. “I bet the people who make those decisions have never had their ass hanging out in the breeze ...”
“The people you’re picking up—do they know?”
“Nope. They know to be at a certain place at a certain time. My worry is that they’re going to be surrounded by the KGB version of a SWAT team.” Clark lifted a radio. “Your end is real easy. I don’t say the right thing in the right way, on the right schedule, you and your boat get the hell out of here.”
“Leave you behind.” It wasn’t a question.
“Unless you’d prefer to join me at Lefortovo Prison. Along with the rest of the crew, of course. It might look bad in the papers, Captain.”
“You struck me as a sensible man, too.”
Clark laughed. “It’s a real long story.”
“Colonel Eich?”
“Von Eich,” the pilot corrected Jack. “My ancestors were Prussians. You’re Dr. Ryan, right? What can I do for you?” Jack took a seat. They were sitting in the Defense Attaché’s office. The attaché, an Air Force general, was letting them use it.
“You know who I work for?”
“I seem to recall you’re one of the intel guys, but I’m just your driver, remember? I leave the important stuff to the folks in soft clothes,” the Colonel said.
“Not anymore. I have a job for you.”
“What do you mean, a job?”
“You’ll love it.” Jack was wrong. He didn’t.
It was hard to keep his mind on his official job. Part of that was the mind-numbing boredom of the negotiating process, but the largest part was the heady wine of his unofficial job, and his mind was locked on that while he fiddled with his earpiece to get all of the simultaneous translation of the Soviet negotiator’s second rendition of his current speech. The hint of the previous day, that on-site inspections would be more limited than previously agreed, was gone now. Instead they were asking for broader authority to inspect American sites. That would make the Pentagon happy, Jack thought with a concealed smile. Russian intelligence officers climbing over factories and descending into silos to get looks at American missiles, all under the watchful eyes of American counterintel officers and Strategic Air Command guards—who’d be fingering their new Beretta pistols all the while. And the submarine boys, who often regarded the rest of their own Navy as potential enemies, what would they think of having Russians aboard? It sounded as though they wouldn’t get any further than standing on the deck while the technicians inside opened the tube doors under the watchful eyes of the boats’ crews and the Marines who guarded the boomer bases. The same would happen on the Soviet side. Every officer sent to be on the inspection teams would be a spook, perhaps with the o
dd line-officer thrown in to take note of things that only an operator would notice. It was amazing. After thirty years of U.S. demands, the Soviets had finally accepted the idea that both sides should allow officially recognized spying. When that happened, during the previous round of talks on intermediate weapons, the American reaction had been stunned suspicion—Why were the Russians agreeing to our terms? Why did they say yes? What are they really trying to do?
But it was progress, once you got used to the idea. Both sides would have a way of knowing what the other did and what the other had. Neither side would trust the other. Both intelligence communities would see to that. Spies would still be prowling about, looking for indications that the other side was cheating, assembling missiles at a secret location, hiding them in odd places for a surprise attack. They’d find such indications, write interim warning reports, and try to run the information down. Institutional paranoia would last longer than the weapons themselves. Treaties wouldn’t change that, despite all the euphoria in the papers. Jack shifted his eyes to the Soviet who was doing the talking.
Why? Why did you guys change your mind? Do you know what I said in my National Intelligence Estimate? It hasn’t made the papers yet, but you might have seen it. I said that you finally realized (1) how much the goddamned things cost, (2) that ten thousand warheads was enough to fry all of America eight times over when three or four times was probably enough, and (3) that you’d save money by eliminating all your old missiles, the ones that you can’t maintain very well anymore. It’s just business, I told them, not a change in your outlook. Oh, yes: (4) it’s very good public relations, and you still love to play PR games, even though you screw it up every time.
Not that we mind, of course.
Once the agreement went through—and Jack thought it would—both sides would save about three percent of their defense outlays; maybe as much as five percent for the Russians because of their more diverse missile systems, but it was hard to be sure. A small fraction of total defense outlays, it would be enough for the Russians to finance a few new factories, or maybe build some roads, which was what they really needed. How would they reallocate their savings? For that matter, how would America? Jack was supposed to make an assessment of that, too, another Special National Intelligence Estimate. Rather a high-sounding title for what was, after all, nothing more than an official guess, and at the moment, Ryan didn’t have a clue.