wanted a chauffeur-driven Volga limousine, a second dacha at a Black Sea resort where he could keep Olga, invitations to private showings of decadent western movies, and treatment in the Kremlin Clinic when old age began to creep up on him. His career was at a crossroads. He was fifty this year. He spent about half his time behind a desk in Moscow, the other half in the field with his own small team of operatives. He was already older than any other agent still working abroad. From here he would go in one of two directions. If he slowed up, and allowed his past victories to be forgotten, he would end his career lecturing to would-be agents at KGB school No. 311 in Novosibirsk, Siberia. If he continued to score spectacular points in the intelligence game, he would be promoted to a totally administrative job, get appointed to one or two committees, and begin a challenging-but safe--career in the organization of the Soviet Union's intelligence effort-and then he would get the Volga limousine and the Black Sea dacha. Sometime in the next two or three years he would need to pull off another great coup. When the news about Nat Dickstein came in, he wondered for a while whether this might be his chance. He had watched Dickstein's career with the nostalgic fascination of a mathematics teacher whose brightest pupil has decided to go to art school. While still at Oxford he had heard stories about the stolen boatload of guns, and as a result had himself initiated Dickstein's KGB file. Over the years additions had been made to the file by himself and others, based on occasional sightings, rumors, guesswork and good old-fashioned espionage. Ile file made it clear that Dickstein was now one of the most formidable agents in the Mossad. If Rostov could bring home his head on a platter, the future would be assured. But Rostov was a careful operator. When he was able to pick his targets, he picked easy ones. He was no death-glory man: quite the reverse. One of his more important talents was the ability to become invisible when chancy assignments were being handed out. A contest between himself and Dickstein would be uncomfortably even. He would read with interest any further reports from Cairo on what Nat Dickstein was doing in Luxembourg; but he would take care not to get involved. He had not come this far by sticking his neck out.
The forum for discussion on the Arab bomb was the Middle Fast political committee. It could have been any one of eleven or twelve Kremlin committees, for the same factions were represented on all the interested committees, and they would have said the same things; and the result would have been the same, because this issue was big enough to override factional considerations. The committee had nineteen members, but two were abroad, one was ill and one had been run over by a truck on the day of the meeting. It made no difference. Only three people counted: one from the Foreign Ministry, one KGB man and one man who represented the Party Secretary. Among the supernumeraries were David Rostov's boss, who collected all the committee memberships he could just on general principles, and Rostov himself, acting as aide. (It was by signs such as this that Rostov knew he was being considered for the next promotion.) Ilie KGB was against the Arab bomb, because the KGB's power was clandestine and the bomb would shift decisions into the overt sphere and out of the range of KGB activity. For that very reason the Foreign Ministry was in favor-the bomb would give them more work and more influence. T'he Party Secretary was against, because if the Arabs. were to win decisively in the Middle Past, how then would the USSR retain a foothold there? The discussion opened with the reading of the KGB report 'Recent Developments in Egyptian Armaments.' Rostov could Imagine exactly how the one fact in the report had been spun out with a little background gleaned from a phone call to Cairo, a good deal of guesswork and much bullshit, into a screed which took twenty minutes to read. He 'had done that kind of thing himself more than once.
A Foreign Ministry underling then stated, at some length, his interpretation of Soviet policy in the Middle East. Whatever the motives of the Zionist settlers, he said, it was clear that Israel had survived only because of the support it had received from western capitalism; and capitalism's purpose had been to build a Middle East outpost from which to keep an eye on its oil interests. Any doubts about this analysis had been swept away by the Anglo- Franco-Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956. Soviet policy was to support the Arabs in their natural hostility to this rump of colonialism. Now, he said, although it might have been. imprudent-in terms of global politics-for the USSR to initiate Arab nuclear armament, nevertheless once such armament had commenced it was a straightforward extension of Soviet policy to support it. The man talked forever. Everyone was so bored by this interminable statement of the obvious that the discussion thereafter became quite informal: so much so, in fact, that Rostov's boss said, 'Yes, but, shit, we can't give atom bombs to those fucking lunatics.' 'I agree,' said the Party Secretary's man, who was also chairman of the committee. 'If they have the bomb, they'll use it. That will force the Americans to attack the Arabs, with or without mikes-I'd say with. Then the Soviet Union has only two options: let down its allies, or start World War Three.' 'Another Cuba,' someone muttered. The man from the Foreign Ministry said, 'Tbe answer to that might be a treaty with the Americans under which both sides agree that in no circumstances will they use nuclear weapons in the Middle East.' If he could get started on a project like that, his job would be safe for twenty-five years. The KGB man said, 'Then if the Arabs dropped the bomb, would that count as our breaking the treaty?' A woman in a white apron entered, pulling a trolley of tea, and the committee took a break. In the interval the Party Secretary's man stood by the trolley with a cup in his hand and a mouth full of fruitcake and told a joke. 'It seems there was a captain in the KGB whose stupid son had great difficulty understanding the concepts of the Party, the Motherland, the Unions and the People. The captain told the boy to think of his father as the Party, his mother as the Motherland, his grandmother as the Unions and himself as the People. Still the boy did not understand. In a rage the father locked the boy in a wardrobe in the parental bedroom. That night the boy was still in the wardrobe when the father began to make love to the mother. The boy, watching through the wardrobe keyhole, said, 'Now I understandl The Party rapes the Motherland while the Unions sleep and the People have to stand and sufferl' Everybody roared with laughter. The tea lady shook her head in mock disgust. Rostov had heard the joke before. When the committee went reluctantly back to work, it was the Party Secretary's man who asked the crucial question. 'If we refuse to give the Egyptians the technical help they're asking for, will they still be able to build the bomb?' The KGB man who had presented the report said, 'There is not enough information to give a definite answer, sir. However, I have taken background briefing from one of our scientists on this joint, and it seems that to build a crude nuclear bomb is actually no more difficult, technically, than to build a conventional bomb.' The Foreign Ministry man said, 'I think we must assume that they will be able to build it without our help, if perhaps more slowly.' 'I can do my own guessing,' the chairman said sharply. 'Of course,' said the Foreign Ministry man, chastened. The KGB man continued, 'Their only serious problem would be to obtain a supply of plutonium. Whether they have one or not, we simply do not know.' David Rostov took in all this with great interest. In his opinion there was only one decision the committee could possibly take. The chairman now confirmed his view. 'My reading of the situation is as follows,' he began. 'If we help the Egyptians build their bomb, we continue and strengthen our existing Middle East policy, we improve our influence in Cairo, and we are in a position to exert some control over the bomb. If we refuse to help, we estrange ourselves from the Arabs, and we possibly leave a situation in which they still have a bomb but we have no control over it. The Foreign Ministry man said, 'In other words, if they're going to have a bomb anyway, there had better be a Russian finger on the trigger.'
The chairman threw him a look of irritation, and continued, 'We might, then,,recommend to the Secretariat as follows: the Egyptians should be given technical help with their nuclear reactor project, such help always to be structured with a view to Soviet personnel gaining ultimate control of the weaponry.' Rostov permitted himself the ghost of a satisfied smile: it was the conclusion he had expected. The Foreign Ministry man said, 'So move.' The KOB man said, 'Seconded.' 'All in favor?' They were all in favor. IMe committee proceeded to the next item on the agenda. It was not until after the meeting that Rostov was struck by this thought: if the Egyptians were in fact not able to build their bomb unaided-for lack of uranium, for instance-then they had done a very expert job'of bluffing the Russians into giving them the help they needed.
Rostov liked his family, In small doses. Ihe advantage of his kind of job was that by the time he got bored with them-and it was boring, living with children--he was off on another trip abroad, and by the time he came back he was missing them enough to put up with them for a few more months. He was fond of YnrL the elder boy, despite his cheap mill ic and contentious views about dissident poets; but Vladimir, the younger, was the apple of his eye. As a baby Vladimir had been so pretty that people thought he was a girl. From the start Rostov had taught the boy games of logic, spoken to him in complex sentences, discussed with him the geography of distant countries, the mechanics of engines, and the workings of radios, flowers, water taps and political parties. He had come to the top of every class he was put into-although now, Rostov thought, he might find his equals at Phys-Mat No. 2. Rostov knew he was trying to instill in his son some of the ambitions he himself had failed to fulfill. Fortunately this meshed with the boy's own inclinations: he knew he was clever, he liked being clever, and he wanted to be a Great Man. The only thing he balked at was the work he had to do for the Young Communist Izague: he thought this was a waste of time. Rostov had often said, 'Perhaps it is a waste of time, but you will never get anywhere in any field of endeavor unless you also make progress in the Party. If you want to change the system, you'll have to get to the top and change it from within.' Vladimir accepted this and went to the Young Communist League meetings: he had
