'It's used to clean mildew off bathroom tiles. It will come right out of the uniform, Comrade Captain. But be sure you have it dry-cleaned soon. An acid solution, you see, it could damage the wool.'
The captain wanted to be mad, but the man had warned him, hadn't he? Next time I'll know better, he thought. 'Very well, take it in.'
'Thank you. I am sorry about the uniform. Don't forget to have it cleaned.'
The captain waved to a private and walked off. The soldier unlocked the door. The driver and his assistant went inside to get a two-wheeled hand truck.
'I warned him,' the driver said to the private.
'You certainly did, Comrade.' The soldier was amused. He, too, was looking forward to going off duty, and it wasn't often that you saw an officer get caught.
The driver watched his assistant load the cans onto the hand truck, and followed him as he wheeled it into the building to the service elevator. Then both returned for the second load.
They took the elevator to the third floor, shut the power off, and moved their loads to a storage room directly below the large fourth-floor conference room.
'That was good with the captain,' the assistant said. 'Now let's get to work.'
'Yes, Comrade Colonel,' the driver answered at once. The four cans of carpet-cleaning fluid had false tops which the lieutenant removed and set aside. Next he took out the satchel charges. The colonel had memorized the blueprints of the building. The wall pillars were in the outside comers of the room. One charge went to each, fixed to the inboard side. The empty cans were placed next to the charges, hiding them. Next the lieutenant removed two of the false-ceiling panels, exposing the steel beams supporting the fourth floor slab. The remaining charges were attached there, and the ceiling panels replaced. The charges already had their detonators attached. The colonel took the electronic triggering device out of his pocket, he checked his watch, and waited for three minutes before pressing the button to activate the timers. The bombs would explode in exactly eight hours.
The colonel watched the lieutenant tidy up, then wheeled the hand truck back to the elevator. Two minutes later, they left the building. The captain was back.
'Comrade,' he said to the driver. 'You shouldn't let this old one do all the heavy work. Show some respect.'
'You are kind, Comrade Captain.' The colonel smiled crookedly and pulled a half-liter bottle of vodka from his pocket. 'Drink?'
The captain's solicitous attitude ended abruptly. A worker drinking on duty-in the Kremlin! 'Move along!'
'Good day, Comrade.' The driver got into the truck and drove off. They had to pass through the same security checkpoints, but their papers were still in order.
After leaving the Kremlin, the truck turned north on Marksa Prospekt and followed it all the way to the KGB headquarters building at 2 Dzerzhinskiy Square.
'Where are the kids?'
'Asleep.' Martha Toland hugged her husband. She was wearing something filmy and attractive. 'I had them out swimming all day, and they just couldn't stay awake.' An impish smile. He remembered the first such smile, on Sunset Beach, Oahu, she with a surfboard and a skimpy swimsuit. She still loved the water. And the bikini still fit.
'Why do I sense a plan here?'
'Probably because you're a nasty, suspicious spook.' Marty walked into the kitchen and came out with a bottle of Lancers Rosk and two chilled glasses. 'Now why don't you take a nice hot shower and unwind a bit. When you're finished, we can relax.'
It sounded awfully good. What followed was even better.
10. Remember, Remember
Toland woke to hear his phone ringing in the dark. He was still dopey from the drive up from Norfolk and the wine. It took a ring or two for him to react properly. His first considered action was to check the display on the clock-radio-2:11. Two in the fuckin' morning! he thought, sure that the ringing was caused by a prank or a wrong number. He lifted the receiver.
'Hello,' he said gruffly.
'Lieutenant Commander Toland, please.'
Uh-oh. 'Speaking.'
'This is the CINCLANT intel watch officer,' the disembodied voice said. 'You are ordered to return to your duty station at once. Please acknowledge the order, Commander.'
'Back to Norfolk right away. Understood.' Wholly on instinct, Bob rotated himself in the bed to a sitting position, his bare feet on the floor.
'Very well, Commander.' The phone clicked off.
'What is it, honey?' Marty asked.
'They need me back at Norfolk.'
'When?'
'Now.' That woke her up. Martha Toland bolted upright in the bed. The covers spilled off her chest, and the moonlight through the window gave her skin a pale, ethereal glow.
'But you just got here!'
'Don't I know it.' Bob stood and walked awkwardly toward the bathroom. He had to shower and drink some coffee if he had any hope of reaching Norfolk alive. When he returned ten minutes later, lathering his face, he saw that his wife had clicked on the bedroom TV to Cable Network News.
'Bob, you better listen to this.'
'This is Rich Suddler coming to you live from the Kremlin,' said a reporter in a blue blazer. Behind him Toland could see the grim stone walls of the ancient citadel fortified by Ivan the Terrible-now being patrolled by armed soldiers in combat dress. Toland stopped what he was doing and walked toward the TV. Something very strange was going on. A full company of armed troops in the Kremlin could mean many things, all of them bad. 'There has been an explosion in the Council of Ministers building here in Moscow. At approximately nine-thirty this morning, Moscow Time, while I was taping a report not half a mile away, we were surprised to hear a sharp sound coming from the new glass-and-steel structure, and-'
'Rich, this is Dionna McGee at the anchor desk.' The image of Suddler and the Kremlin retreated to a comer of the screen as the director inserted the attractive black anchorperson who ran the night desk for CNN. 'I presume that you had some Soviet security personnel with you at the time. How did they react?'
'Well, Dionna, we can show you that if you can hold a minute for my technicians to set up that tape, I-' He pressed the earphone tight into his ear. 'Okay, coming up now, Dionna-'
The tape cut off the live picture, filling the entire screen. It was on a pause setting, with Suddler frozen in the middle of a gesture to something or other, probably the part of the wall where they buried important Communists, Toland thought. The tape began to roll.
Simultaneously, Suddler flinched and spun around as a thundering report echoed across the expanse of the square. By professional instinct the cameraman turned at once to the source of the sound, and after a moment's wobble, the lens settled in on a ball of dust and smoke expanding up and away from the strangely modem building in the Kremlin's otherwise Slavic Rococo complex. A second later the zoom lens darted in on the scene. Fully three floors of the building had been stripped of their glass curtain wall, and the camera followed a large conference table as it fell down off one floor slab that seemed to be dangling from a half dozen reinforcing rods. The camera went down to street level, where there was one obvious body, and perhaps another, along with a collection of automobiles crushed by debris.
In seconds, the whole square was filled with running men in uniform and the first of many official cars. A blurred figure that could only be a man in uniform suddenly blocked the camera lens. The tape stopped at that point, and Rich Suddler came back into the screen with a LIVE caption in the lower left comer.
