my ambitious young friend.'
'I assure you, comrade general,' Karamatsov began, walking toward Varakov's desk.
'Nothing is assured, Karamatsov—but now tell me about your list.'
Karamatsov sat down, then stood again and walked to the opposite end of the semicircle of chairs occupied by KGB and military officials. Turning abruptly—once again for dramatic flair, Varakov supposed— Karamatsov blurted out, 'We must protect the safety of the State at all costs, comrades. And of course it is for this reason that many years ago— before the close of World War Two—my predecessors began the compilation of a list—constantly updated— of persons who in the event of war with the capitalist superpowers would be potential troublemakers, rallying points for resistance, etc. The master list, as it came to be called, has, as I indicated, been constantly updated. It was impossible to predict with any acceptable degree of accuracy who might survive such a war and who might not, and to determine which targets would be most readily able to be eliminated in any event. For this reason, since its inception, the master list was broken into broad categories of persons—all of equal value for elimination purposes.'
'These are names we might recognize?' Varakov interrupted.
'Oh, yes—comrade general, many of these names are important public officials.
Yet many of the other names are not so easily recognized—except to us!'
'Give to me some examples of this, major,' Varakov interrupted again.
'Well—they are from all areas of life. In the Alpha section for example, one of the most important names is Samuel Chambers,' Karamatsov said. 'This Chambers person, as best as we can ascertain, is the only surviving member of something called the presidential Cabinet. He was the minister—secretary, that is—of communications. According to our interpretation of the American Constitution, he is, in fact, whether he knows it or not, the president of the United States at this moment. He must be eliminated. Chambers is an excellent example. He was in the Beta section until his elevation to the Alpha section corresponding with his elevation to the presidential advisory Cabinet. He has always been ardently opposed to our country—an anticommunist he called himself. He has always had a great popular support because of this position. He owned several radio and television broadcasting stations, had a radio program broadcast on independently owned radio stations around the country for several years— his name was a household word, as the Americanism goes.'
'This homeheld word—he is president now? Then do we not wish to negotiate formal surrender with him?' Varakov asked, forcing his voice to sound patient, interested.
'Under normal circumstances, yes, comrade general—we would. But, this Chambers would never agree. And, if we forced his signing of a conciliatory statement, the people here would never accept its validity. His only value is as a dead man. In his very utility as a symbol of American anticommunist feeling, his death would be but another blow to American resistance, showing them how useless such activity is—how counterproductive.'
'Give me still another example,' Varakov said, killing time for himself until the situation demanded he give Karamatsov formal orders to begin working on the list—he did not like ordering people to die. He had trained as a soldier too long to value life as cheaply as did the KGB.
'I—yes,' Karamatsov said, pacing across the room between the semicircle of chairs and Varakov's desk. 'Yes—a good example. I have no inclination that the man is still alive. He was a writer, living in the American southeast. Adventure novels about American terrorists fighting communist agents from the Soviet Union and other countries. He wrote often as well in magazines devoted to sporting firearms. Several times he openly condemned our system of government in print in national periodicals here. He attempted to exalt individualism and subvert the purposes of social order through his articles and his books—his name I do not recall at this point in time. He would be on a low-priority list, but nonetheless his liquidation would be necessary.
'Still another example would be retired Central Intelligence Agency personnel who remained provisionally active. Reserve officers in the armed forces would be still another list. There are many thousands of names, Comrade General Varakov, and work must be begun immediately to locate and liquidate these persons as potential subversives.'
Varakov slowly, emphatically and quite softly, said, 'Purge?'
'Yes—but a purge for the ultimate furthering of the collective purposes of the heroic Soviet people, comrade general!'
Varakov looked at Karamatsov, then glanced to Natalia Tiemerovna. She was moving uncomfortably in the folding chair. He looked back to Karamatsov, watched as Karamatsov watched him. 'I will sign this order,' Varakov almost whispered. 'But since individual execution orders would not be necessary, I will have it amended to read that only such persons as currently are named on the master list can be liquidated without express written order, signed by myself.' Coughing, Varakov added, 'Ido not wish to initiate a bloodbath.' Then looking at Karamatsov, staring at the younger man's coal-black eyes and the intensity there, Varakov extended the first finger of his right hand, pointing it at Karamatsov, and said, 'Make no mistake that I will be so foolish as to sign a blanket order that could someday be turned into my own death warrant, comrade.'
Chapter Five
The red-orange orb of sun was low on the horizon at the far end of the long straight ribbon of flat highway reaching toward El Paso, still some ten or more miles away, as Rourke figured it. He turned his bike onto the shoulder and braked, arcing the front wheel to the side and resting on it, looking down the road. He didn't bother to turn as Rubenstein pulled up beside him, overshooting Rourke by a few feet, then walking the bike back. 'Why are we stopping, John?'
'We're about eight or ten minutes out of El Paso. It doesn't look like it was hit. But it wasn't what you might call the gentlest town in the world before the war, I remember. Juarez is right across the bridge from it over the Rio Grande.'
'We going into Mexico?'
'No—not unless I can't avoid it. Those paramilitary troops we locked horns with were bad enough to worry about and they're on our tail by now again. Probably had a radio, right?'
'Yeah,' Rubenstein said, looking thoughtful a moment. 'Yeah, I think they did.'
'Well, we might have a reception waiting for us up ahead. But in Mexico we could have federal troops on
