to keep an eye on everything. But the Third Chief Directorate was a mere shadow of what it had been. The military had persuaded Narmonov to remove it, as a precondition to its own goal of a truly professional force, loyal to the country and the new constitution.
Historians invariably deemed the age in which they lived to be one of transition. For once they were right, Jack thought. If this were not an age of transition, then it was hard to imagine what the hell was. In the case of the Soviets, they were poised between two political and economic worlds, teetering, not quite balanced, not quite sure which way they would go. And that made their political situation dangerously vulnerable to… what? Jack asked himself.
Damned near anything.
SPINNAKER said Narmonov was being pressured to make a deal with the military, which, he said, was part of the Forward-to-the-Past mob. Group One. The danger existed, he said, that the Soviet Union would revert to a quasi-military state that repressed its progressive elements; that Narmonov had lost his nerve.
“He says he's had one-on-one meetings with Andrey Il'ych,” Mary Pat pointed out. “Intel doesn't come any better than that.”
“Also true,” Jack replied. “It is worrisome, isn't it?”
“I'm not really concerned about a reversion to Marxist rule… What worries me—”
“Yeah, I know. Civil war.” Civil war in a country with thirty thousand nuclear warheads. There's a cheery thought.
“Our position has been to cut Narmonov as much slack as he needs, but if our guy is right, that might be the wrong policy.”
“What's Ed think?”
“Same as me. We trust Kadishev. I recruited him. Ed and I have seen every report he's ever sent in. He delivers. He's smart, well placed, very perceptive, a ballsy son-of-a-gun. When's the last time he gave us bad stuff?”
“I don't know that he ever has,” Jack replied.
“Neither do I, Jack.”
Ryan leaned back in his chair. “Christ, I just love these easy calls… I don't know, MP. The time I met Narmonov… that is one tough, smart, agile son-of-a-bitch. He's got real brass ones.” Jack stopped. More than you can say for yourself, boy.
“We all have our limitations. Even the brass ones go soft.” Mrs. Foley smiled. “Oops, wrong metaphor. People run out of steam. Stress, hours, time in the saddle. Reality grinds us all down. Why do you think I'm taking time off? Being pregnant gives me a great excuse. Having a newborn isn't exactly a picnic, but I get a month or so of the fundamentals, real life instead of the stuff we do here every day. That's one advantage we have over men, doc. You guys can't break away like we women can. That may be Andrey Il'ych's problem. Who can he turn to for advice? Where can he go for help? He's been there a long time. He's dealing with a deteriorating situation, and he's running out of gas. That's what SPINNAKER tells us, and it is consistent with the facts.”
“Except that we haven't heard anything like this from anyone else.”
“But he's our best guy for the inside stuff.”
“Which completes the circularity of the argument, Mary Pat.”
“Doc, you have the report, and you have my opinion,” Mrs. Foley pointed out.
“Yes, ma'am.” Jack set the document on his desk.
“What are you going to tell them?” “Them” was the top row of the executive branch: Fowler, Elliot, Talbot.
“I guess I go with your evaluation. I'm not entirely comfortable with it, but I don't have anything to counter your position with. Besides, the last time I went against you, turned out I was the one who blew the call.”
“You know, you're a pretty good boss.”
“And you're pretty good at letting me down easy.”
“We all have bad days,” Mrs. Foley said, as she got awkwardly to her feet. “Let me waddle back to my office.”
Jack rose also and walked to open the door for her. “When are you due?”
She smiled back at him. “October thirty-first — Halloween, but I'm always late, and they're always big ones.”
“You take care of yourself.” Jack watched her leave, then walked in to see the Director.
“You'd better look this over.”
“Narmonov? I heard another SPINNAKER came in.”
“You heard right, sir.”
“Who's doing the write-up?”
“I will,” Jack said. “I want to do some cross-checking first, though.”
“I go down tomorrow. I'd like to have it then.”
“I'll have it done tonight.”
“Good. Thanks, Jack.”
This is the place, Gunther told himself halfway into the first quarter. The stadium accommodated sixty-two thousand seven hundred twenty paying fans. Bock figured another thousand or so people selling snacks and beverages. The game was not supposed to be an important one, but it was clear that Americans were as serious about their football as Europeans were. There was a surprising number of people with multi-colored paint on their faces — the local team colors, of course. Several were actually stripped to the waist and had their chests painted up like football sweaters, complete with the huge numbers the Americans used. Various exhortatory banners hung from the rails at the front of the upper decks. There were women on the playing field selected for their dancing ability and other physical attributes, leading the fans in cheers. Bock learned about a curious kind of demonstration called The Wave.
He also learned about the sovereignty of American television. This large raucous crowd meekly accepted stoppage of the game so that ABC could intersperse the play with commercials — that would have started a riot in the most civilized European soccer crowd. TV was even used to regulate play. The field was littered with referees in striped shirts, and even they were supervised by cameras and, Russell pointed out, another official whose job it was to look at videotape recordings of every play and rule on the rightness or wrongness of every official ruling on the field. And to supervise that, two enormous TV screens made the same replays visible to the crowd. If all that had been tried in Europe, there would have been dead officials and fans at every game. The combination of riotous enthusiasm and meek civilization here was remarkable to Bock. The game was less interesting, though he saw Russell genuinely enjoyed it. The ferocious violence of American football was broken by long periods of inactivity. The occasional flaring of tempers was muted by the fact that each player wore enough protective equipment as to require a pistol to inflict genuine harm. And they were so big. There could hardly be a man down there under a hundred kilos. It would have been easy to call them oafish and awkward, but the running backs and others demonstrated speed and agility that one might never have guessed. For all that, the rules of the game were incomprehensible. Bock had never been one to enjoy sporting contests anyway. He'd played soccer as a boy, but that was far in his past.
Gunther returned his attention to the stadium. It was a massive and impressive structure with its arching steel roof. The seats had rudimentary cushions. There was an adequate number of toilets, and a massive collection of concession stands, most serving weak American beer. A total of sixty-five thousand people here, counting police, concessionaires, TV technicians. Nearby apartments… He realized that he'd have to educate himself on the effects of nuclear weapons to come up with a proper estimate of expected casualties. Certainly a hundred thousand. Probably more. Enough. He wondered how many of these people would be here. Most, perhaps. Sitting in their comfortable chairs, drinking their cold, weak beer, devouring their hot dogs and peanuts. Bock had been involved in two aircraft incidents. One airliner blown out of the sky, another attempted hijacking that had not gone well at all. He'd fantasized at the time about the victims, sitting in comfortable chairs, eating their mediocre meals, watching their in-flight movie, not knowing that their lives were completely in the control of others whom they did not know. Not knowing. That was the beauty of it, how he could know and they could not. To have such control over human life. It was like being God, Bock thought, his eyes surveying the crowd. A particularly cruel and unfeeling God, to be sure, but history was cruel and unfeeling, wasn't it?
Yes, this was the place.
