'Very well. Dismissed, Colonel.' Gerasimov went back to the papers on his desk.
The Chairman of the Committee for State Security allowed himself a smile after Vatutin left. He was amazed at how well things were going. The masterstroke was the Vaneyeva matter. It wasn't often that you uncovered a spy ring in Moscow, and when you did so, the congratulations were always mixed with the question: Why did it take you so long? That wouldn't happen this time. No, not with Vaneyeva's father about to be appointed to the Politburo. And Secretary Narmonov thought that he'd be loyal to the man who'd arranged the promotion. Narmonov, with all his dreams of reducing arms, of loosening the grip of the Party on the life of the nation, of 'liberalizing' what had been bequeathed to the Party? Gerasimov was going to change all that.
It wouldn't be easy, of course. Gerasimov had only three firm allies on the Politburo, but among them was Alexandrov, the ideologue whom the Secretary had been unable to retire after he'd changed allegiance. And now he had another, one quite unknown to the Comrade General Secretary. On the other hand, Narmonov had the Army behind him.
That was a legacy of Mathias Rust, the German teenager who'd landed his rented Cessna in Red Square. Narmonov was a shrewd operator. Rust had flown into the Soviet Union on Border Guards Day, a coincidence that he could not explain-and Narmonov had denied KGB the opportunity to interrogate the hooligan properly! Gerasimov still growled about that. The young man had staged his flight on the only day in the year when one could be sure that the KGB's vast force of border guards would be gloriously drunk. That had got him across the Gulf of Finland undetected. Then the air defense command, Voyska PVO, had failed to detect him, and the child had landed right in front of St. Basil's!
General Secretary Narmonov had acted quickly after that: firing the chief of Voyska PVO and Defense Minister Sokolov after a stormy Politburo session where Gerasimov had been unable to raise any objections, lest he endanger his own position. The new Defense Minister, D. T. Yazov, was the Secretary's man, a nobody from far down the numerical list of senior officers; a man who, having failed to earn his post, depended on the Secretary to stay there. That had covered Narmonov's most vulnerable flank. The complication it added now was that Yazov was still learning his job, and he obviously depended on old hands like Filitov to teach it to him.
And Vatutin thinks that this is merely a counterespionage case, Gerasimov grunted to himself.
The security procedures that revolved around CARDINAL data precluded Foley from sending any information in the normal way. Even one-time-pad ciphers, which were theoretically unbreakable, were denied him. So the cover sheet on the latest report would warn the A fraternity that the data being dispatched wasn't quite what was expected.
That realization lifted Bob Ritter right off his chair. He made his photocopies and destroyed the originals before walking to Judge Moore's office. Greer and Ryan were already there.
'He ran out of film,' the DDO said as soon as the door was closed.
'What?' Moore asked.
'Something new came in. It seems that our KGB colleagues have an agent inside Tea Clipper who just gave them most of the design work on this new gollywog mirror gadget, and CARDINAL decided that that was more important. He didn't have enough film left for everything, so he prioritized on what the KGB is up to. We only have half of what their laser system looks like.'
'Half might be enough,' Ryan observed. That drew a scowl.
Ritter was not the least bit happy that Ryan was now A-cleared.
'He discusses the effects of the design change, but there's nothing about the change itself.'
'Can we identify the source of the leak on our side?' Admiral Greer asked.
'Maybe. It's somebody who really understands mirrors. Parks has to see this right quick. Ryan, you've actually been there. What do you think?'
'The test I watched validated the performance of the mirror and the computer software that runs it. If the Russians can duplicate it-well, we know they have the laser part down pat, don't we?' He stopped for a moment. 'Gentlemen, this is scary. If the Russians get there first, it blows away all the arms-control criteria, and it faces us with a deteriorating strategic situation. I mean, it would take several years before the problem manifests itself, but?'
'Well, if our man can get another goddamned film cassette,' the Deputy Director for Operations said, 'we can get to work on it ourselves. The good news is that this Bondarenko guy that Misha selected to run the laser desk at the Ministry will report to our man regularly on what's happening. The bad news-'
'Well, we don't have to go into that now,' Judge Moore said. Ryan didn't need to know any of that, his eyes told Ritter, who nodded instant agreement. 'Jack, you said you had something else?'
'There's going to be a new appointment to the Politburo Monday-Ilya Arkadyevich Vaneyev. Age sixty-three, widower. One daughter, Svetlana, who works at GOSPLAN; she's divorced, with one child. Vaneyev is a pretty straight guy, honest by their standards, not much in the way of dirty laundry that we know about. He's moving up from a Central Committee slot. He's the guy who took over the agricultural post that Narmonov held and did fairly well at it. The thinking is that he's going to be Narmonov's man. That gives him four full voting members of the Politburo who belong to him, one more than the Alexandrov faction, and-' He stopped when he saw the pained looks on the other three faces in the office.
'Something wrong?'
'That daughter of his. She's on Sir Basil's payroll,' Judge
Moore told him.
'Terminate the contract,' Ryan said. 'It would be nice to have that kind of source, but that kind of scandal now would endanger Narmonov. Put her into retirement. Reactivate her in a few years, maybe, but right now shut her the hell off.'
'Might not be that easy,' Ritter said, and let it go at that. 'How's the evaluation coming?'
'Finished it yesterday.'
'It's for the President's eyes plus a few others, but this one's going to be tightly held.'
'Fair enough. I can have it printed up this afternoon. If that's all??' It was. Ryan left the room. Moore watched the door close before speaking.
'I haven't told anyone yet, but the President is concerned about Narmonov's political position again. Ernie Alien is worried that the latest change in the Soviet position indicates a weakening in Narmonov's support at home, and he's convinced the boss that this is a bad time to push on a few issues. The implication of that is, if we bring CARDINAL out, well, it might have an undesired political effect.'
'If Misha gets caught, we get the same political effect,' Ritter pointed out. 'Not to mention the slightly deleterious effect it'll have on our man. Arthur, they are after him. They may have gotten to Vaneyev's daughter already-'
'She's back at work in GOSPLAN,' the DCI said.
'Yeah, and the man at the cleaners has disappeared. They got to her and broke her,' the DDO insisted. 'We have to break him out once and for all. We can't leave him flapping in the breeze, Arthur. We owe this man.'
'I cannot authorize the extraction without presidential approval.'
Ritter came close to exploding. 'Then get it! Screw the politics-in this case, screw the politics. There is a practical side to this, Arthur. If we let a man like this go down, and we don't lift a finger to protect him, the word will get out-hell, the Russians'll make a TV miniseries out of it! It will cost us more in the long term than this temporary political garbage.'
'Hold it for a minute,' Greer said. 'If they broke this Party guy's daughter, how come she's back to work?'
'Politics?' Moore mused. 'You suppose the KGB's unable to hurt this guy's family?'
'Right!' the DDO snorted. 'Gerasimov's in the opposing faction, and he'd pass the opportunity to deny a Politburo seat to Narmonov's man? It smells like politics, all right, but not that kind. More likely our friend Alexandrov has the new boy in his back pocket and Narmonov doesn't know about it.'
'So, you think they've broken her, but let her go and are using her as leverage on the old man?' Moore asked. 'It does make sense. But there's no evidence.'
'Alexandrov's too old to go after the post himself, and anyway the ideologue never seems to get the top spot-more fun to play kingmaker. Gerasimov's his fair-haired boy, though, and we know that he's got enough ambition to have himself crowned Nicholas the Third.'
'Bob, you've just come up with another reason not to rock the boat right now.' Greer sipped at his coffee for a
